


Children of Thanos

by Fierceawakening



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Child Abuse, Gen, Generally Terrible Parenting, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2020-03-29 20:01:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 27,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19026931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fierceawakening/pseuds/Fierceawakening
Summary: So the good guys get to be a family. Why not the bad guys too? Seemed interesting, so here's Dad!Thanos trying to deal with a more fearsome problem than superheroes: Teenagers. And teenage supervillains trying to deal with... being supervillains. And also being teenagers.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Screw canon. Dad!Thanos sees all his Children as his actual kids. Therefore he’s a little less blatantly terrible to them than he is in canon.
> 
> This does not, however, mean that he’s a decent parent, or that I’m saying this is what good parents look like. It very much isn’t.
> 
> Please let me know if I need to add any tags. I’m new to this fandom (yes, really) and I don’t yet know how y’all do things.

“The blue one is sulking again.”

Gamora paces, all restless energy. Anger, as always, just waiting to be unleashed. It’s beautiful, even now. Even when Thanos suspects his daughter is merely being petty. He fights down a smile.

“The blue one? Your sister. Nebula.”

Gamora whirls around, her hair spinning behind her, and spits the words. “I cannot stand it.”

Thanos nods, though it baffles him. “She ought to use her time more wisely.”

“She’s a fool.”

“She ought to study her new modification. Learn its use. Study and practice.”

“Or spar, once her modifications heal. She loses to me, but not to the others.”

“True.” His lip curls, and he doesn’t know whether he means to smile or frown. Of all the Children he has plucked from all the worlds he’s cleansed, two have proven themselves the deadliest. The one stomping back and forth in front of him, and the one brooding in her quarters. If Gamora is to be believed. But he has never had reason to doubt her.

And Gamora is clearly the better fighter. Faster, more clever, more skilled. And it seems that no matter what Thanos does, no matter how he lectures Nebula or torments her or modifies her flesh, she will not rise to the challenge.

“Have you told her that?” he asks. It is, perhaps, too kind. But if Nebula improves as a result…

“Of course I told her that!”

“And?”

Gamora sighs. Too heavily. He’d known his children would be difficult, even if he raised them for his work from the beginning. Even if he trained and nurtured them from the time they were small. But these tantrums, he did not expect. He rubs at the bridge of his nose, trying to soothe away a headache that will just come anyway.

Gamora doesn’t look at him. She shakes a small green fist at someone who isn’t here. “I told her to go beat up on Big, Dumb, and Ugly. She’d learn from it, maybe.”

This time, Thanos does smile. His Gamora has always been perceptive.

And ruthless. “She might kill him.”

“But she’d win!”

“Yes. And we would lose one of our number.” And I would lose a son.

“But she would feel better. And maybe she’d stop glaring at me.”

Thanos strokes his chin. It wouldn’t be the first time one of his children had killed another. He encourages the rivalry between Gamora and Nebula most, but every one of them learned to fight by battling one another. And sometimes children can be unruly.

Might it not be worth one life if Nebula grows stronger?

But Gamora isn’t interested in such questions. She’s pacing again, “Instead she sulks. Every time. And stares at me like she wants to tear me apart.”

Thanos laughs. “Then perhaps she is learning.”

But Gamora doesn’t stop her pacing. “The others—if they stare at me I fight them. But Nebula would never agree to fight me. Unless I let her win or something.”

She stops pacing and looks out a window. Beyond, the stars stretch, glimmers of light against black. She stares out at them and says nothing, and he wonders, not for the first time, what she thinks when she looks out. The Order will not return to her planet for years at least.

They will realize, eventually, what he has done to them and why. They will thank him, then. Will thank her too if she comes with him. He has always planned to take her there, someday after his great deed is done.

But for now, they grieve. And he cannot let her see their pain. Seeing it might break her resolve.

And then he would have to harm her. Lose her, even. Tears prick at the backs of his eyelids. He cannot let them fall in front of her. He cannot let her see.

When he speaks, his voice is soft. “Is that what you want, daughter? To lose?”

That gets Gamora’s attention. She turns to glare at him, and the fury in her eyes and downturned mouth fills him with pride. He did well, choosing this one.

“To lose? To that blue creep? Never, Father.” She crosses her arms in front of her and flings them outward as though practicing with her swords. “Never.”

“Then it seems you have a problem, little one.”

She shakes her head, as if he were one of her more foolish brothers. He should reprimand her, but something in him softens.

“I don’t have a problem,” Gamora snaps. “Nebula has a problem.”

“Then why come to me?”

“You think she’s going to listen to me? I sparred her and won and now her leg is half metal.”

Thanos pinches his nose again. He wants nothing more than to soothe her. To wrap his hand around her head and calm her, as he once did. To tell her Nebula will heal, and grow, and become more fierce and more brave. More like her.

But he cannot promise. Nebula continues to struggle, and he isn’t certain why. “And you think Nebula will listen to me? I punished her once already. If I replace another of her body parts, she will be in too much pain to listen.”

Gamora’s lip curls. That at least he understands. But then her expression softens. “That isn’t what I meant.”

“Then what?”

“Talk to her.”

He blinks. “Her loyalty to our cause is not the issue.”

“About what is bothering her, Father.”

“Coddling her will not help.”

“That isn’t what I meant either.”

“Then what is there to do but leave her to think on her failure? Which we both have done before.”

Gamora steps closer. She hangs her head like she’s ashamed of whatever she’s about to say. It unsettles him. Such displays are for the timid, and Thanos chose her because she was never timid. Not even in the face of death.

He leans down and reaches a hand down toward her. She tilts her head to look up at him. “That’s what I mean. That right there.”

He stops, his fingers hovering just above her head and back. “My… hand?”

She stares back at him. “Do you remember, Father? In the beginning? When you… when you found me…”

“On Zen-Whoberi.” He winces and closes his eyes. He did what was required, but that doesn’t mean he enjoyed it.

“No. After. You took me back to the ship, gave me a room… with a bed too big for me. But I…”

“You did not sleep.”

“No. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw…”

“Shh.” He reaches down to cup her head, and part of her back. When she was a child, his hand could close around almost all of her tiny body. And under his hand that night, she finally stilled.

It wasn’t sleep. Not the kind a warrior would need to gather strength. But it was rest, and that was something. And his Gamora needed it more than once after the fall of her home.

Zen-Whoberi is beautiful again already, so his scouts report. But he cannot take her back. Not yet.

He nuzzles her hair. “I remember.”

“Then you understand.”

His lip curls. “If I coddle Nebula, she will stay weak.”

“Yes. But this, with me—does it make me weak, Father?”

“No. Of course not.” _It makes me weak. Not you._

“Nebula is my sister. You said it yourself. She’s your daughter, just like me.”

His frown deepens. He says nothing.

“We’re all your children, Father.”

“Yes.”

“Which means every one of us came from somewhere. From… someplace else.”

He nods. In a just universe, his children would hail from Titan. Not from some far-off world he only visited to save. In a just universe, he would have raised them there, in the meadows and fields of their true home. He would not have taken them from anywhere. Would not have ripped them from the lives they knew.

But Titan died long ago. There is no justice in this universe, except what the brave wring from it with their bare hands. His Children are all stolen, but they are all he has.

Gamora blinks, but doesn’t look away. “Every one of us has… pain.”

His throat is dry, so dry he can barely say it. “Yes.”

“I don’t like my sister much. I’m tired of her brooding. But you have us fight, and then you leave her with her pain.”

He does not reply.

“You never did that to me. No matter how you punished me, no matter what I did, you never… left me with the pain.”

He lifts his hand from her head and back. He tilts it toward himself and stares at it as though he’s never seen it. “Never, little one.”

“Then talk to her, Father. It has to be you.”

He groans, a low rumble from somewhere deep in his chest. “Thank you, little one.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murderous Grape Dad attempts actual communication.

He finds her in the sparring room, alone. There’s a practice dummy in front of her, a hologram lighting up its vital points. The dummy is damaged, its torso blackened by energy blasts and its limbs scored with deep cuts. The blasted chest bears the mark of narrow blades. The cuts are clean, precise, and deep enough that the hologram flickers.

Several more of them are arrayed against the wall. Most of them also need repair. A few are missing limbs. He doesn’t let himself smile, but his lip twitches.

“Nebula.”

She turns at the sound of his voice and lowers her blades. She walks to him without a word, her movements graceful, like she’s still practicing. But as he watches, one of her legs drags, just a little. Even her other siblings might notice it, but he does.

She isn’t used to the new cybernetic. That, or she’s still in pain.

She lowers herself to the ground in front of him, her head lowered in obeisance. She doesn’t look at him. “Father.”

He should say something, but the moment stretches on. She’s waiting for an order, but he has no order to give. He hesitates, unsure how to break the silence. “Gamora said I should speak with you.”

Nebula freezes. Thanos frowns, but he waits. Then he hears it, a faint whisper. “Gamora said.”

Thanos opens his mouth to rebuke her, but hesitates. He isn’t here to reprimand her. But what else can he say?

“Daughter,” he tries, looking down at her.

She tilts her head and looks up at him. Her lips move, but she doesn’t speak.

“Tell me what is wrong.”

She blinks and lowers her head again. “Nothing, Father. I have been training, as you would wish.”

He looks over at the mutilated dummies and almost smiles again. From the way Nebula watches him, he gathers she’s noticed. “So I see. Are you in pain?”

She doesn’t answer. Instead she goes still, so still he almost misses that she’s trembling.

He sighs. “The question wasn’t meant as a trap.”

“I am… there is some discomfort, Father. But it will pass.”

“It will.” 

She blinks. A corner of her lip turns up like she’s deciding whether to smile back.

He tilts his head toward the dummy and the blades she laid down when he came in. She’s placed them on the ground, likely so she could answer his call faster. “Swords are Gamora’s favored weapon.”

The nascent smile dies half-formed. “Should I cease to--?”

He shakes his head. “It’s an observation. Not a command.”

“Gamora knows things I do not, even though she is younger than I am.”

“That is so.”

“I must… study them, and learn from them.”

“Yes.”

“Then what is it you wish?”

He leans down and offers his hand. It feels strange, and some part of him says she will never learn, not this way. 

He ignores it. What he said to Gamora is true. Whatever Nebula’s potential, these enhancements haven’t driven her to seize it. And if they haven’t yet, they won’t. Not by themselves. “Stand.”

She reaches out a hand. Her fingertips, so small and delicate, brush his. Then she jerks her hand away and rises to her feet.

That is good. It means she’s determined not to give in to weakness. But somehow his hand feels empty closing on air. “You have been in here for hours.”

“Did Gamora tell you that too?”

“Corvus.”

Nebula scowls. “Corvus has his own business to mind.”

Thanos chuckles. This, he understands. “You’re alone in the practice room. Perhaps you should have invited him in with you. Spent your time teaching him that lesson. Rather than inanimate objects that will only need repair.”

She pivots on her injured leg. The movement is almost smooth, and he feels a surge of pride. _You have potential, child. It is you who do not see it._

She jabs at the air and then lowers her fist. “It would be… pleasant. But there is little point. I have bested him already.”

“Him and most of the others.”

“All but Gamora.” She looks away.

 _Then you must try harder._ He bites his lip to keep from saying it. It’s true, but it won’t help. What would he say to Gamora if Nebula had finally beaten her?

“Daughter.”

“Yes?”

“Failure is a grave sin. But every one of us has committed it.”

She stares at him, her eyes wide.

“Even me.”

She looks at him a long moment, thinking. Rifling through her databanks as well, from the flicker of light in her eyes. Then she takes a step toward him and reaches out a hand. “Your home…”

“Yes.”

Her hand touches the grooves of his chin. “You warned them what was coming, and they did not listen. That failure isn’t yours.”

“If I had convinced them to follow my plan, half of them would be dead now. But I did not—and all of them died instead.”

“Father…”

He presses a finger to the back of her hand. “Do you remember the time before?”

“Before?”

“Before my army came. Before I found you.”

He’s asked the question several times. Nebula’s answer is always the same. She shakes her head. “I remember only you.”

“Only me?”

She closes her eyes. “I remember… rubble. I remember weeping, and crawling, and hiding. Then your hand, pulling me out. There was light. It hurt my eyes, but I could not see.”

“Because of your tears.”

“Yes.”

“You were so small. I cupped you in my hands.”

“I…” she closes her eyes, thinking, and shakes her head. “There is nothing before that. Only… half-remembered shapes and voices. Then light, and you.”

“I held you like that, in hopes you would stop crying. You did not. You cried until you could not cry any longer.”

She looks down. “I am not brave. I have never been.” There is venom in her voice, but it isn’t aimed at him. “Not like Gamora.”

He sighs and thinks for a long moment. Finally he says, “Even Gamora has dreams.”

“Dreams?”

“She does not sleep. Not well.” He shakes his head. “Neither, at times, do I.”

Nebula pulls her hand from under his and staggers back. “Why do you tell me this?”

He looks at the swords, the damaged dummies, the flickering hologram. “Failure is a grave sin, daughter. But not because it disappoints me.”

“Then what—?”

“Shh,” he says, in a tone he’s only used for one other person. She settles, and she isn’t trembling now. She’s looking at him, silent and attentive.

“Failure is a grave sin,” he says again. “But only because of its price.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Figured it was about time to show the kids doing things. By which I mostly mean bickering. 
> 
> And also violent murder.

Proxima squints at the projection. “Who’s the slug?” 

Nebula doesn’t answer. Gamora guesses she doesn’t know. She shrugs and toys with her switchblade, extending its blades and balancing it on her fingertips.

A year or two ago it might have intrigued her. Not every world has slug people on it. This particular slug person has glued a bunch of gems and bits of metal to their back, apparently using their own slime. It’s just repugnant enough to stand out, which is probably why Nebula bothered to capture the image. 

That or she just feels like showing off. Either that she hacked into the ship’s systems, or that her implants let her project the recording. 

Gamora might have taunted her for it, but she really couldn’t blame her. The worst part of waiting is always the boredom, and at least Nebula is trying to do something about it. 

Still, it’s not interesting. Not the way it might have been a couple years ago. Then, Gamora might have wondered about the slime or the gems or… anything. But now all Gamora sees is a fool, and she’s met enough of those for a lifetime already.

Someone steps toward the hologram. Corvus or the Maw, she guesses, from the light steps. 

“It doesn’t matter who it is,” she says, not looking up. “They’re already dead.”

 “An envoy, I think.” Corvus, from the voice. And the fact that he hasn’t said anything pompous yet.

 Cull laughs. “There’s always someone.” 

“Always some idiot who can’t just play the odds,” Proxima says and snickers too. 

Gamora tilts her fingers and catches the hilt of her knife when it starts to fall, just so she can balance it in her hand again. No one says anything. She focuses on the way the blade glimmers in the light, the weight of the handle on her fingertips. 

It’s not helping. 

“An envoy,” she says, just to fill the silence with her own voice. 

“Yes,” Nebula says. “They hailed us. On official frequencies.” 

Gamora winces. “Then they actually think they can bargain with Thanos.” 

“That, or they’re desperate enough to try anyway.” Proxima laughs. 

“So they not only know we’re coming,” Corvus cuts in, “they—” 

“—Really did call us to beg,” Proxima finishes. 

“And not just for themself,” Gamora whispers. 

Proxima chuckles again and starts to say something, but her voice quickly trails off. 

“That one should make their peace with what is coming.” 

Gamora’s head snaps up at the sound of the voice. Ebony Maw stands in the doorway, frowning at the projection.

He steps past Gamora like his sister playing with a knife is no reason to be concerned. Which it isn’t, not really. She knows what she’s doing, and he knows that. And if she ever forgot what she was doing, he could just push it out of his way with his mind anyway. 

None of which makes his dramatic entrance any less obnoxious. Gamora glares at him. 

He fixes her with a withering gaze of his own. “But that one is a fool and a coward who has probably never seen death. You, my siblings, have no excuse.” 

“We have three days until the next purge,” Nebula says. “It is no surprise that we are… tense.” 

“Tense. You stand around gossiping, and you say ‘tense.’” 

“What would you prefer?” asks Corvus. “Sitting around the meditation chamber?” 

Gamora can’t help but grin. Still, if even Corvus is snapping at the Maw like that, things are getting to him too. 

“To this? Of course.” The edge of Ebony Maw’s robe swirls around his feet. Gamora fights not to laugh out loud. _Using your powers to express your disapproval, sibling? We’re not little children you can frighten by moving cloth around._  

But the Maw isn’t done giving his lecture, apparently. “Why mock some foolish life form that has only doomed itself? I could spend my time thinking about my purpose instead.” 

“We all know what our purpose is,” Proxima says. 

“We will join you in the meditation chamber the day before,” Nebula says. “As we always do.” 

“We’ll be ready,” Cull growls. “You know that.” 

Ebony Maw nods. “You will.” 

“Then stop being so sanctimonious, sibling,” Gamora mutters. She wraps her hand around the hilt of her switchblade, retracts one of the blades, and tilts the other one in his direction. 

“You could go back to the meditation chamber,” says Corvus, “if our conversation is too coarse for you.” 

Ebony Maw crosses his legs and hovers above one of the chairs. “I’m staying here. Thanos only knows what trouble you all would get into if someone weren’t watching over you.” 

Gamora rolls her eyes. _You’re wasting your energy floating like that._ But he’s right about one thing. Arguing with each other like this just wastes time. 

And it’s unnerving, him hovering like that. Like some enforcer sent to watch over them.

It’s been like that forever, though. From the beginning. He’d stood at Thanos’s side even on the day their army had invaded Zen-Whoberi. She grips the knife until the jewels on the hilt dig into her palm. She closes her eyes, focused on the sensation.

She takes a deep breath, opens them again, and stares directly at the projection, willing herself not to think too much about the person floating behind her.

* * *

It’s a pointless meeting, but it’s happening anyway. Ebony Maw announces their guest’s entrance and floats through the doorway, his feet hovering just off the ground.

“Ambassador F’gwik, Representative of the Alliance of Governments of O’thrp.”

 _Showoff,_ Gamora mouths. But watching the ambassador crawl in behind him, she’s not sure she can blame him. For one thing, they’re leaving a trail of slime on the floor. For another, they’ve glued even more bits of rock and metal to their back than they wore in Nebula’s projection.

She pulls out a small scanner and cups it in her hand, trying not to be too obvious. It decodes the glyphs carved into the metal. Symbols of rank, apparently. Awards of prestige, one piled on top of the other. 

Gamora smirks. _You look a little weighted down._

The slug’s eye stalks swivel, looking from one person to the next. Quick glances. At her and her siblings, mostly. _We’re not the ones you should be looking at._

Thanos lowers himself down to one knee to address them. Which they don't deserve, but everyone in the room already knows that. Gamora curls her hand around the hilt of her switchblade and imagines throwing it at one of F’gwik’s eyes when they get rude. 

But right now they just look nervous. She can’t put out someone’s eye just for that, no matter how much Thanos favors her. 

She glances around the room. The rest of her siblings look just as bored, except maybe Ebony Maw. But they’ve had more practice at hiding it, and Ebony Maw would stare at a wall for three hours perfectly happily if Thanos ordered him to do it. Gamora glances over at Proxima and tries to mimic her demeanor. 

Thanos lowers himself to one knee like none of this irritates him. Like this slug thing deserves it. “Ambassador F’gwik.” 

“Great Titan,” F’gwik answers, wiggling their eye stalks and wringing tiny hands. “You honor me and all of O’thrp by granting me audience.” 

“That remains to be seen.” 

“We are a humble world and have little to offer. But surely even the humblest world has something to offer you.” 

“There is nothing we want.” 

The eye stalks quiver. “We have seen the results of your conquests. We know we stand no chance against your might.” 

“You misunderstand,” Ebony Maw says. 

Thanos nods. “The Maw is right. We want nothing. Not from this world or any other.” 

F’gwik wrings their hands. They look from Ebony Maw to Thanos and back again. Their mouth opens and closes, and slime drips from their skin. After a long moment they speak, their voice high and pinched. “But we can offer you our world’s resources, knowing that you could take them by force if we did not.”

“That really is what you think we’re looking for,” Corvus says, his voice soft.

Thanos doesn’t say anything. The silence lengthens and Gamora shivers. She knows what it’s like to get Looked At until you confess you just said something you shouldn’t have.

Even though the slug deserves it.

“I… I intended no insult,” F’gwik says. “I only meant that… you are feared across the galaxy. There is no corner of the galaxy that your army hasn’t stormed through.”

 _We go where the scans show us worlds in decline, you slimy lump._ Gamora glowers at an errant eyestalk until it withdraws to gawk at Cull instead.

“But crossing so much of space again and again uses up fuel,” F’gwik says. “A lot of it. Quickly.”

Thanos nods. “It can. But why should that concern you? That might delay us, but we would come anyway.”

“All I am saying is… the Gk’mar Region is rich in raw materials. Nearly all of our fuel is refined there. We—” F’gwik’s mouth opens and closes.

“Yes?”

“The Alliance of Governments has agreed. We’ll give you the whole thing, if you leave the rest of our world be.”

“My son is right. That is insulting.”

Their eyestalks twitch. “We know we have little to offer, Great One. But the people of Gk’mar are industrious and clever. And they understand the importance of this negotiation.”

 _Sure they do._ The blade of Gamora’s knife flicks out before she even knows she’s extended it. _Whatever you have in mind, I’m sure you told them all about it._

“You’re prepared to offer them too,” Thanos says.

“We know that you take young ones from the worlds you vanquish.” They wave a gelatinous hand at Gamora and her siblings. “Like these here.”

Proxima snarls and bares her teeth. Gamora grins. So much for standing on protocol. Her other hand finds the hilt of her sword, and a quick glance over to the other side of the room shows her Cull’s hands are curled into fists, too, and he’s smirking like he does when he’s looking for a fight.

“That is not your concern.” Thanos doesn’t stand, but Gamora has had enough practice watching him to see him tense, and his voice is cold. 

“All apologies, Great One. I only meant that if you tire of this crop of slaves, we can provide you with more of them.” 

“What did you call us?” That was Nebula, who’d been quiet so far but was now walking toward them, her batons crackling with energy. 

“These are my children,” Thanos says, rising to his feet. “Not my slaves.” 

F’gwik squawks and tries to slither backward through the door. Gamora lunges, but Proxima is closer. F’gwik throws themself to the floor, apparently hoping the badges they glued to their back would make good armor. 

But if that is their plan, they thought of it too late. Proxima strikes out with her spear and they rear back, not wanting to impale themselves, the points pressing against what Gamora might have called their chest. 

“Give me one good reason you're not already dead,” Proxima says.  

“I…” F’gwik shrinks back, wringing their hands. 

“Your plan to sell out your own people isn’t a good reason,” says Corvus. He takes a step closer to Proxima. 

F’gwik’s mouth opens and closes. “You’re only going to… kill them anyw—" The words dissolve into a shriek as energy crackled over the tips of the spear. 

F’gwik stretches their eyestalks and stares up at Thanos. “Call them off. Please.” 

“No.” 

“I never meant—” 

“You insulted me. But what you said to them was worse. Now you want me to intervene?” 

“Please. I didn’t know.” 

“You don’t know much,” says Gamora. She won’t get a chance at this thing, not the way they keep dooming themselves every time they open their gelatinous mouth. But it feels good to finally say something. “About anything, apparently.” 

“My daughter is right,” says Thanos. “As are the rest of my children. Which means your fate is in their hands." 

“I… can only offer my apologies. And… and promise to learn.” 

“In two days?” Cull asks from somewhere behind her. 

“I would like to think anyone can come to understand our purpose,” Ebony Maw says. For once, he’s not bothering to float. “But for some... it seems that only death shows them the truth.” 

“Most,” says Nebula. 

“Fine.” Proxima prods F’gwik again. “Anything else to say for yourself?” 

“I… I…” they stutter. “It…” 

“I didn’t think so,” Proxima says. “Some people just have to make sure they’re going to die.” She sinks her spear into F’gwik’s chest. 

F’gwik screams again, the noise ringing through the chamber. They slump forward, but the eyes at the ends of the stalks don’t dim. The stalks wave wildly, the eyes staring. Gamora frowns. 

Proxima tugs at her spear. F’gwik’s flesh oozes around it, holding it fast. Proxima curses and pulls again. “It’s stuck!”

Corvus moves to help her pull. Nebula walks over to them, holding something in her open palm. She’s smirking. “Try this.” 

Gamora snatches it up—a small vial of some sort, filled with tiny white crystals. F’gwik makes another horrible noise that might have the word “no” in it. She twists it open. 

“Just throw some of it at them,” Nebula says, still looking so calm Gamora almost wants to punch her. “That should be enough. At least now that there are a few holes in whatever’s protecting that creature’s skin.” 

Gamora pours a little of the stuff into her hand. Carefully—Nebula wouldn’t harm her, not with Thanos to answer to, but she might still try something. Relieved when it doesn’t itch or sting or make the skin of her palms peel, Gamora flings it at the still-screaming slug. 

It starts in the places where the spear has pierced their skin, but it spreads so quickly Gamora might have missed it if she’d blinked. The skin around the wounds dries in moments, deflating into a drooping, wrinkled mess. Then even that cracks and splinters, like they’ve left F’gwik’s skin in the hot sun of some desert planet. 

Proxima pulls her spear away and the dessicated husk collapses, falling to the floor with a tinkle of metal from the badges still affixed to it. 

“Well then,” says Cull, sounding impressed. 

Proxima is frowning at her spear, which is covered in dried ichor. “Ugh.” She sends a flare of energy through the spear to burn it off. 

Which would be fine, except it smells. Gamora sighs and passes the vial of whatever-it-is back to Nebula. “Where did you get this? How did you get this? How did you know it would work?” 

Nebula just smirks and turns away. 

Gamora starts to retort but notices a familiar shadow looming over them. “Fine then, don’t tell me,” she mutters at Nebula’s back, keeping her voice low as Thanos lumbers over to them. 

He looks down at the ruin of skin and metal that had been F’gwik. “Gather that up, put it into a pod, and arrange it in whatever way their people do to show respect for their dead. Then send it back down to O’thrp as their answer.” 

“That’s more than they deserve,” Cull says and bends down to pick up the body. 

“It is. But it’s not more than their world does,” Thanos answers. “Not everyone who dies in two days will deserve it.” 

“They won’t understand,” Gamora says. “They’ll just see a pod. With a dead person in it.” 

"You're right." Thanos looks down at the spot where the body had lain. "They won't understand."

He shakes his head, sighs, and looks over at Cull again. "Do it anyway.” 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ebony Maw corners Gamora. Apparently Thanos isn't the only one who's noticed her whole not sleeping thing.
> 
> Content warning for his needles, though what he does isn't graphic.

“You should be sleeping.” 

Gamora’s head snaps up. The last thing she wants right now is to talk to her siblings, and the last one of them she wants to talk to is Ebony Maw. “I’m meditating.” 

“Meditation isn’t sleep. And no, sibling, you are not even doing that.” 

She opens her eyes. He’s frowning and waving a hand, apparently at her bad posture. She blinks, straightens her back, and curls her hands. She narrows her eyes but keeps looking at him. If all that matters is her form, maybe he’ll wander off and find his own corner to meditate in. 

He doesn’t wander off. “That isn’t going to help,” he says. 

He’s not wrong. She’s been sitting here so long her legs ache. Her eyes are tired, and they burn. She’s tried closing them, like someone who’s meditating is supposed to, but every time she shuts them all she sees is faces that won’t stop screaming. 

“And you’re going to help me with that?” she asks, giving up and stretching out her legs. 

“If you want to sleep, I could give you something that will help you do it.” 

“You’re the one it’s bothering.” 

“Am I?” 

“I don’t want anything.” She chews her lip, a habit she’s too tired to stop herself from indulging right now. 

“I don’t know why. You need rest. Being stubborn is only going to make getting it more difficult.” 

“You don’t know why.” She tilts her head. 

“I am the medic. Whatever is going through your head—" 

“What, that you’d throw any one of us out the airlock if you could get away with it?” 

He sighs. “I have personally installed cybernetics into you, Nebula, and almost everyone else. If I intended any harm to anyone, I would have done it by now.” 

He tilts his head. “Besides which, you are right. if I harmed you, our lord father would kill me. You would be injured, he would have one less follower, and I would be dead. A state of affairs useful to none of the three of us.” 

“Useful?” she snaps. “Is that all that matters? How useful we’re being?” 

“Is there anything else?” 

 _I don’t know how to tell you just how much you aren’t helping right now._ She looks past him, around the room, at the lamps giving off dim, warm light and the plants hanging on the walls. Some of the plants glow too, a faint bioluminescence that might be soothing if her mind would just stop replaying screams. 

Below them sit small basins of water for cleansing, or for watering the plants in a pinch. She’s seen Thanos do that now and then, reacting to something she can’t see about their shape or size or the hue or brightness of their glow. 

Gamora and her siblings use the basins to clean their weapons, sometimes. The situation comes up more often than Gamora might have guessed, the first time she saw this room. 

“Maybe there’s nothing else for you,” she says, “but the rest of us hope to be something more than useful.” 

The corner of his lip twitches. “Such as?” 

She can’t tell whether he’s angry or laughing. She clenches a fist, wanting to punch the expression off his face. But she’s in no shape to fight. “If I admit I can’t think of an answer for that, will you leave?” 

“No.” 

“Then at least go over there—" she waves at his designated spot in the circle—“and give me some peace and quiet. Please.” 

“Sitting here will only do so much. The best thing for you to do right now is go to bed and recover your strength. If you need to take something for that, I can--”

She clenches her teeth. “If I take something, it means I’m weak.” _Weaker than you, at least._

“Going without rest is also weakness.”

“I’m fine.”

“You are not.” One of his needles floats free from his robes and hovers in front of him. “Shall I prove it to you?”

She doesn’t answer. She’s too busy untangling her legs and shifting into some approximation of a defensive stance. Whatever he’s doing, she’s not going to make it easy for him. 

He raises an eyeridge, apparently taking that as a yes, and the needle gleams as it zooms toward her. She twists to evade it and growls. Tired as she is, her instincts take over, and she’s annoyed with him already. 

The rage warms her. It curls up from somewhere in her belly and sears away the things she sees when she closes her eyes. And the needle is something to focus on, a pinpoint to draw her attention away from the questions in her mind. 

It dips low and she leaps to evade it, then whirls around to keep it in her line of sight. It moves and she moves with it, and somehow this works better than whatever the meditating was supposed to do. 

It darts to one side. She swerves in sync with it and smirks. _Do you think I don’t know you by now, sibling?_

But apparently he’s thought of that. Even as she moves it doubles back, scoring a line on her upper arm. It stings and she curses. 

He withdraws it. It hovers in front of him, point down. “That shouldn’t have been easy.” 

Gamora glares at the cut on her arm. The blood beginning to drip from the cut is a betrayal. “It doesn’t mean anything. First blood always goes to you.” 

“Not that quickly.” 

She says nothing. 

“You win against me every time. But how do you do that?” 

She growls. He doesn’t respond. She shakes her head, defeated, and mutters, “By waiting you out.” 

He nods. “Yes. Until I can’t use my abilities any longer.” He glances at her arm. “Do you really think you could outlast me right now?” 

She bares her teeth. “This isn’t a sparring match.” 

“It isn’t. But if you can’t spar, then you are not ‘fine.’” 

“All right. I’m not fine. But I will be in a couple of days. So what is it you want me to do? Head to my quarters and be quiet?” 

“If that’s what you decide, I cannot stop you.” He dips the needle into one of the basins of water and tucks it back into his robes. “But you’ll do the same thing there that you did here.” 

“So this is about throwing medication at me?” 

“You refused it.” He steeples his fingers again. “I could force it on you, but you'd attack me for it when you wake."

Gamora smirks. _Yeah. But I might do that when I'm feeling better anyway._

"Which means," he says, "that this is about figuring out what is wrong and how to mitigate it.” 

“Figuring out what’s wrong? You… you mean you don’t know?” 

“I have my suspicions.” 

“Suspicions. Not knowledge. Not… feelings.” 

He looks back at her with a mild expression. 

She curls her hand into a fist and imagines the bruise it would leave on his jaw. “Of course not. Not from you.” 

His eyes widen. She’d thought his posture was already straight, but somehow it straightens again. His hands, at his sides, go perfectly still. 

“Sibling,” he says, every syllable clipped and clear, “what precisely are you talking about?” 

That’s not what she’s expecting. Something inside her whispers _Be careful_ , but she’s tired and angry and feeding the brittle thing inside her feels a little like being awake. She tightens her fists and lets it warm her. 

“I’m talking,” she snarls, “about you.” 

He doesn’t answer. Maybe he’s about to, but it doesn’t matter and she doesn’t care. “I’m talking about landing on a planet and hearing nothing but the screams of the dying and the sobs of the ones who lived. And I’m talking about what happens when the screams die down and all anyone can hear is you.” 

“When I pray over the dead.” 

“No, when you walk through the killing fields telling everyone who lived that they’re a savior and everyone who died that they’re a saint.” 

“I tell them that their suffering has meaning,” he says, an edge in his voice. “I tell them that their deaths, and the deaths of those they love, are not in vain.” 

“You tell them to rejoice!” 

He nods. “Those who live will rebuild their world. Few people get that honor.” 

“I know that. You know that.” 

“Then why are you so angry? It wastes far more energy than I use to float.” 

“Because we know that. Father knows that. Father trained us all our lives to know that!” She waves her arms in a helpless gesture. “But they don’t know that! How could they? They’re watching people die in front of them!” 

“That’s why I am trying to tell them.” 

“Trying.” She lets her hands fall to her sides. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Ebony Maw. Brother. That all you’re doing is… trying.” 

He says nothing, but she thinks she hears him sigh. 

“This… this thing we do. It takes a toll on… almost everyone. Even on Thanos.” 

“Visibly so, yes.” 

“The only one it doesn’t affect is you.” 

His glare turns cold. “I’ve seen pointless deaths, Gamora.” 

“And the rest of us haven’t?” 

“No, I don’t think you have. Not like this.” He waves a hand, and a few of the bioluminescent plants float over to ring his head. Mood lighting, Gamora guesses, half annoyed and half glad to see he’s back to being dramatic. 

“And now you’re going to lecture me,” she says and shakes her head. 

“Did I ever tell you what happened to my homeworld?” he asks, his tone benign. “What it was like there, by the time Thanos came?” 

“No!” She blinks at him. “Why would I know that? You were here before me, and that… that’s private. I’d never ask anyone about that. Not even you.” 

She thinks he might smirk at that. She hopes he will. But he doesn’t. The fire in her gut is fading fast, and something queasy and thin is taking its place.

“Sit back down,” he says.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Headcanons fire away.
> 
> Ebony Maw explains why exactly he's Like That.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is pretty much all courtesy of my own head. I'm sure there's at least one bit of canon somewhere out there it wildly contradicts. I do not care. This is MY sandbox, dammit.

“Thanos was late.” 

“Late?” Gamora stares blankly at him. “No world has fallen but Titan. Unless…” She winces. “Unless something happened before I came here that I don’t know about.”

 He shakes his head, and his lip twitches in what she reads as a bitter smile. “I said ‘late.’ I did not say ‘too late.’”

 “What do you—?”

 “What happens, sibling, to a world in decline?”

_Is this a test?_ She glowers at him, but it gives her something to focus on, and at least he’s stopped pestering her about sleep she can’t get right now. She closes her eyes, thinking, and they burn from exhaustion but at least that’s not her memories. “Famine. From lack of resources or changes in climate or both. Inhospitable conditions. Illness.”

“From?”

She opens her eyes again. _I wasn’t done._ But if he’s interrupting her, he must be making a point. “If the environment is too polluted, people’s bodies are too busy fighting that to also fight disease.”

She looks over at him. He hasn’t acknowledged her yet. She bites her lip. “That and… and sometimes whatever carries it thrives in… altered conditions.”

“That too,” he says, his voice soft.

She breathes a curse in Titan. “I’m sorry. You?”

He shakes his head. “Not me. Everyone else. The village I came from was very small.”

She squints at him. _From a small village? You?_ Ever since that day on Zen-Whoberi, she’s seen him in fine robes and armor, heard his sermons praising Thanos, honed her skills fighting his powers. She’d always imagined he came from some big city, a would-be scholar, before Thanos took him away.

“It… the Withering was a mild disease decades before. A day or two of chills or fever, nothing more. But as our world weakened—" 

“The pathogen thrived,” she finishes for him. 

“By the time I was a child, it killed.” 

_I’m sorry._ She doesn’t say it aloud. She might sound like she pities him. 

She knows what she should say instead. _That’s why this is important_ or _We cannot let that happen again_ or _I remember what matters now._ But those stick in her throat too, and all she can do is look down. 

If he notices her struggle, he gives no outward sign. “I cared for those I could.” 

“You? How old were you? I thought you—“ 

“No older than you were when we reached Zen-Whoberi.” 

The rage wells up in her again. “You were a child!” 

She’s not sure why it’s so intense. Ebony Maw is her sibling, yes, but that doesn’t mean she likes him. And he’s been here far longer than she has anyway. He doesn’t need her protection. 

But it feels good, bright and clean, and she lets herself go with it.  How could they require that you—?” 

 “It was necessary.” 

“You needed them.” She clenches a fist. “It’s not right. It's not right for them to need you instead.” 

“My birth family was ill. As was everyone else.” 

She blinks. Not at his story, but at the way he says _my birth family._ If he sounded sad, she’d understand. Fear, she’d understand. Anger, she’d understand. Rage at them for not protecting him, for being too weak to stand against Thanos, for dying. She’d understand any of that. But he says it in the same tone he says _everyone else._

But that’s not something she can ask. Not yet. “Wait. You didn’t get it?” 

“I did not.” The glowing fruits rotate around his head. “Anyone who can do this—" One of the fruits lowers itself from the circle. He reaches out a hand as if to catch it, but it hovers above his palm—"never fell ill.” 

“That gives you immunity?” 

“The two things occur together. Why, I do not know.” He lowers the fruit into his hand. 

“Then you were lucky.” 

His lip twists. “My people did not attribute that to luck.” 

“They had a problem with it?” She shouldn’t laugh but can’t hold back a smirk. _Of course they did. It’s cheating._

“They called us—" he spits an angry syllable in a tongue she doesn’t know. Has she ever heard him speak it? She can’t recall. 

“I don’t know what that—" 

“Wizards,” he says. “It means ‘wizards.’” 

She frowns. “I take it that’s not a compliment.” 

“It is not.” His hand clenches around the glowing fruit. Its light dims. Gamora scowls at him, and his eyes widen. He looks down at his hand and the fruit in it and hastily lets go of it. 

Gamora smirks. Most of the Order have done worse. _But if you bruised one of Father’s plants you’d punish yourself for a week._  

“I… no. Wizard was a grave insult.” 

He looks over at the fruit. Checking it for damage? Distracting himself from some memory? She isn’t sure, but the fruit slides back into the circle he’s made around his head, moving slowly enough that she can tell he’s being careful. 

“It didn’t just mean that you had abilities others lacked. It implied you had… done some terrible thing to gain them.” 

Gamora shakes her head. Everyone here has done terrible things. But not until Thanos claimed them. “You were a child.” 

His lip twitches in what might be a smile. “That’s not how superstition works.” 

Gamora shakes her head, thinking of the ambassador she finished killing for Proxima a few days before they landed. “No. It’s not.” 

She laughs. Killing idiots like that has never been the problem. Killing their enemies isn’t the problem either. She’s a weapon, and she has been for almost as long as she can remember. 

It’s what happens afterward that keeps getting stuck in her head. Her eyes droop, and she forces them back open even though they burn. 

Her sibling is still playing with the plants. They hover under his chin, lighting his face from below. He looks even uglier than usual, and she lets herself snicker again. 

“And once people began dying, it was easy for the foolish and the envious to put their faith in old stories.” 

_Right._ She shakes her head to clear it _._ “They rejected you. Even though you were—" 

“Assisting them. It did not matter. I could not cure them.” 

“They resented you.” 

“They knew they would die anyway.” 

“And you would not.” 

“And I would not. To them, I was—" 

“Unnatural.” She winces. How many times has she watched him float down the hallways, with his hands folded and his face devoid of all expression, and thought it herself? And wasn’t she just thinking it now, watching his little light show turn his face into a mess of glowing wrinkles? 

She lets out a slow breath. “And Father came in the middle of all that?” 

“What choice did he have? If it hadn’t been the Withering it would have been famine. Or the heat. Or the floods. Or the—" 

She hisses and holds up a hand. “You don’t need to keep going. We’ve all been over this before.” And over it, and over it, and over it, until she could recite it in her sleep. _When I sleep, anyway._  

“It seems you need to be reminded,” he says, and frowns like he tastes something bitter. 

Her hands curl into fists again and she growls. He stares back with no expression and the snarl dies on her lips. He’s right. As much as she wants to break his jaw for talking like that… the reminder should have helped. She knows how to do what must be done. And she knows why. And hearing it should soothe her. 

She shakes her head to clear it. Perhaps she should talk to Thanos. He has a way of explaining all this that always seems to quell her doubts. 

But she can’t do it yet. Not when her father is, like any sane being, asleep. And not when it’s so obvious how tired she is. How weak. How confused. She bites her lip. _Tomorrow._

Her sibling is still looking at her. 

“I’m fine,” she snarls, not caring that it’s not at all convincing. 

He folds his hands again and looks up like he’s imploring the universe for patience.

“Is that when your… when the people you were caring for died? Or was it the disease?” 

Asking it feels wrong. She’s not supposed to ask about this. He should stab her with his needles for prying, and she should let him do it. 

“Neither,” he says. “I killed them.” 

She blinks. “You? Why?” 

“Delirium is a symptom of the later stages of the disease.” 

_You sound like you’re reading from a textbook._ She doesn’t say it. Not in the middle of this. Not when the floating fruit isn’t moving, and the tips of his fingers are pressed together very hard. “They attacked you?” 

 “They got it into their heads that I had tired of them. They thought I had poisoned the water I’d brought them to drink.” He closes his eyes. “I had thought of it. It seemed—” 

“Kinder,” she says, spitting the word. 

“Yes. But the water I brought them was clean.” 

“I’m sorry, sib—” She bites off the word. “I’m sorry, brother.” 

“The kitchen was behind them. I thought they would hear the drawer slide open. Or the knives clanging against one another.” 

“Maybe they did,” she says. “Maybe they let you do it.” That seems… better, somehow. 

“Or they were too deep in their delusions.” He opens his eyes, but he’s looking past her. “I buried the knives in their backs. I do not think they ever knew it.” 

She lets out a slow breath. She knows how to kill, and she knows just as well how to be sneaky about it. But she’d spent her childhood learning it. Had he done the same, practicing in secret, using powers they thought could only come to evil anyway? 

Or had he just… thought of it all at once, and done it? She shivers. The light from the glowing fruit is cold. _Unnatural._

She looks down at her own hands, opens her palms like she really might just meditate. She’s killed too. _We’re the same._

She reaches out. Not to touch him. That would be too intimate. He’d never forgive her and she’s not sure she’d forgive herself. Instead she reaches for one of the fruits illuminating him, feels its smooth skin. Something living and real under her hands. 

For what feels like the first time tonight, she sees nothing at all when she closes her eyes. She lets herself breathe, slow like she should in these chambers, and opens her eyes again. He’s glancing at her hand but doesn’t reprimand her. 

“Go on,” she says and lets her hand fall. 

“I took the knives with me. I cleaned them in the sink without using my hands.” 

She can’t help but smirk. “That’s practical.” 

She claps a hand over her mouth. This is more than he’s ever told her. Maybe ever told anyone, unless he tells every member of the Order this story and she’s just the last one to hear it. 

But he must not be too insulted, because the corner of his lip turns up as well. She’s relieved. Joking like this feels almost normal. 

“I couldn’t carry them. Not with my hands and not with my powers.” 

She blinks. He’s floated her all the way to the medbay when she’s been unconscious or too injured to walk. She’s seen him carry Cull that way too, and he’s much bigger. Has she ever seen him struggle to do it? Not that she can remember. Not unless he’s hurt as well. 

Or exhausted. She rubs her eyes and presses at closed eyelids, willing herself to pay attention. 

“I wrapped them in cloth,” he’s saying, “as best I could, and said a blessing over them. I am not certain they deserved it, but it seemed proper somehow.” 

She doesn’t answer. She can’t blame him, not after what they did. But her memories of her own mother aren’t like his. They’re warm and soft and safe, and she’s not sure if she’s remembering it right but she can’t imagine feeling that kind of scorn. Not for her mother. Not for her past. Scorn like that is for everything else. 

The silence lengthens. He moves the plants again. They hover over his hands, and she wonders what he’s trying to represent. 

_The bodies, maybe._ Which doesn’t help. She swallows a lump in her throat and says, “Then… what? Then Thanos came after?” 

“Thanos and his army were in Khara—in the city. I knew they would make their way to the village soon.” 

Gamora winces. “And you had no one to protect you.” 

His hands twitch. “I did not need protection.” 

“You weren’t afraid.” 

He snickers, a cold and bitter sound. “I am not you, Gamora. I was terrified.” 

“Then why--?” 

He slides the fruits back into their circle around him. _You look like you’re about to give a sermon, brother._  

“I did not leave the village to run from Thanos,” he says. “I left to seek him out.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Proxima Midnight puts on her war paint.
> 
> Everything is still terrible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for self-harm (sort of, but I'd rather warn than unpleasantly surprise anyone.)

Proxima dips two of her fingers into the little jar of face paint and draws them back sticky and blue. She lifts her fingers to her nose and sniffs at it like she always does. The smell is earthy and sharp, with a tang somewhere in it she couldn’t describe and wouldn’t if she knew how anyway. 

It smells like home. 

She rubs the paint on her forehead without bothering to glance at herself in the mirror. She’s done this every day for years and she knows what she’ll look like when she’s done. 

Like a warrior. Like what she has become. 

She still isn’t sure where Father gets it. Who on her home world, left alive after Father’s army shattered it, is willing to trade with the man who broke it? 

 _Or maybe Father threatened them._ She likes that thought better. When the universe is full of enemies, there’s something to be said for petty cruelty. She looks into the mirror, laughs, and bares her teeth. 

The paint on her forehead is an uneven smudge of blue, like the little marks parents leave on their young children. _This one will be a scholar. This one will be a warrior. This one will be a priest._

She is a warrior. She never had the chance to be anything else. 

Did she want to? She doesn’t remember. Only that her birth parents chose green for a priestess, and she’d screamed and argued with them until she lost her voice.

Now her paint is blue. 

She didn’t choose that either. Thanos needed warriors, so that’s what she became. 

She rubs another line of paint down toward her eyes, remembering. 

She’d known, of course, that Thanos came from another planet—another solar system even, somewhere far away from her home world. And Thanos was both warlord and victor. If someone like that didn’t wear face paint, it was because he didn’t have to. 

She’d told herself that over and over in those first weeks. But the first time she’d showered it had washed the green mark her birth father had painted there away. And every time she looked in the mirror, she saw her face was bare. 

 _Shameful_ , her naked skin said, pale and exposed. _Outcast. Alone._

She’d had to look away every time. Because it was true. She’d let him take her away. 

No one would blame her. She wasn’t a warrior then, and even the adults couldn’t stop what had come for them. 

But her people were proud, and the fighters were the bravest of them. And everyone else, from the priests to the healers to the teachers and the trainers, knew their fighters were the ones who mattered most. 

Had she wanted to be one? She’d wanted to be something. Something loud and strong and important. Maybe a warrior, yes. 

But if she wanted to be a warrior, then when Thanos came picking through the rubble, she should have fought back. Should have shown the family and world she lost that she was worth something, even if it didn’t really matter. 

 _Which it didn’t._ She extends the line toward the ridges near her eyes, where her horns start to sprout from her skin. Paint past the horns meant skill with weapons. Under the eyes meant mastery of at least one. 

_He would have claimed me anyway. Gamora challenged him with words, and he didn’t just take her with him, he decided he liked her best._

She curls her lip. She’ll paint that too, before she’s finished. Blue lips mean she has killed in battle. And the first time was so long ago it startles her to see her lips bare white. 

She’d hated her naked face in those first weeks torn from her home. 

A coward’s face. She’d hidden in a closet, shivering and afraid. She hadn’t even prayed like a would-be priestess should. 

It would be one thing if she’d just kept quiet so no one would hear. Or even if she’d forgotten the words to the prayers. She had a hard time not mixing them up even when she wasn’t about to die. But she’d been too frozen to pray without talking either. Too still to remember if she was breathing at all. 

Did someone like that deserve to wear the gods’ mark? 

She shakes her head to clear away the memory. Maybe she did fail her people. Surely she’d failed the people she’d called parents before Thanos found her anyway. But she didn’t fail the gods. Not then. 

 _If the gods exist, then they are cruel. And not just to the weak, but also to the strong._ _Even Thanos has lost everything._  

She presses a finger to her lips and spreads the color on them. Maybe this thing they do, this harvest of billions of lives at a time, is a better way to worship gods like that than liturgy anyway. 

She’d avoided mirrors, in those days before she had her paint. Or tried to pull her hair down over her eyes so she wouldn’t see herself, even though the stubs of her young horns got in the way. 

It was a reflective panel in one of the ships’ walls that finally undid her. She’d caught sight of her reflection and turned to look before she remembered not to. 

She didn’t know the face she saw. Blank, ash-pale, with trembling lips and haunted eyes. She’d screamed at it, watched it scream back at her, and smashed her fist into the glass before she realized she’d done it. Stinging pain in her fingers brought her back to reality. 

“Child,” said a voice behind her, “why did you do that?” 

She’d looked down just long enough to see her fingers covered in blood and then turned around. She hadn’t wanted to answer. Hadn’t even wanted to look at the owner of that voice. But she was only alive because he spared her, and that meant it was better to obey. 

“I didn’t like seeing my face.” 

She’d forced herself to look at him. She’d made a fool of herself already. 

To her surprise, he’d knelt down. He’d still towered over her, but at least she could look at his face rather than stare into his knees. 

His unpainted face, and he’d looked comfortable, like he didn’t realize he should be ashamed. Or like if he did know, he didn’t care what anybody thought. 

That made her stand up straighter. People had made fun of her back home. Priestesses weren’t loud, unless they were invoking loud gods. They didn’t cuss, or scrape their knees, or get so mad at somebody they were willing to get hit if they’d get to hit back. 

“You’re very strong,” he’d said, looking at the cracks in the wall, “for someone so small.” 

She still remembers how he’d looked at them. Like he was studying them. Like she’d done something interesting. Like he was impressed. She’d almost forgotten that she wasn’t supposed to make him happy and her hand hurt. 

After a moment, he’d turned back to her. “But you shouldn’t hurt yourself, little one. Save that for your enemies.” 

 _Like you?_ she’d thought. But she wasn’t a fool, so she’d bit her lip to keep that from coming out and said, “I’m not a warrior. I don’t have enemies.” 

“You will be.” 

“I… I will be what?”

“A warrior.” He’d smiled but then looked down. “And you will have enemies.”

“No. That’s not right. My parents told me I w—“

He shook his head, so violently she stopped talking. “No, child. This is your family now.”

“Because my parents are dead!” she’d said. She remembers sounding angry, but she also remembers the weight of those words in her mouth. “Your army killed them.”

“Yes.”

She’d stopped short at that. She’d thought he would tell her to be silent. Or fly into a rage. Or worse, send her away. To be righteous and defiant—and dead and alone.

Instead he’d just said yes and hadn’t punished her for saying it, even though he could. And would, many times, for just about anything else.

She never thought she’d know why. But she does know, now. She dips a finger into the little cylinder of makeup. This time she does look in the mirror, precisely positioning her finger just under the center of her lower lip and drawing it down.

There are patterns to the markings below the eyes. On the cheeks and on the chin. Lines and whorls and solid shapes. Every one of them means something. How many you’ve killed. How prestigious the enemy. Whether they died by your own hand, or just at your command. 

She doesn’t know them. She never learned them. 

She’d asked Ebony Maw for help once. She snickers now, remembering it. She’d felt sure he’d like it. Learning the details of a culture he didn’t know. Thinking up rules and standards that would work for the lost sister who couldn’t bring herself to access her home planet’s network even if she remembered how. 

He’d agreed, of course. Spent weeks on it, in fact. Taken time from his work on Father’s model to study every pigment and every mix of it, every subtle stroke and shape and every face they added up to. 

He’d been so precise she couldn’t stand it. Asking things she didn’t know and had no way to remember, about their rank and their skill and their determination and how much it meant to the others when every one of them fell. 

She’d snatched the tablet out of his hand and flung it full force against the wall before he realized he should catch it with his powers. When he’d picked it up, the screen was a web of cracks. He’d floated off saying something about how if she was going to break things outside of sparring, that was a waste and he wasn’t going to help. 

She never asked him again. And it was a small thing. Too small to bother Thanos. 

So she paints the chin mark she remembers. The one she’s sure she knows. 

How many kills? _Many._

Who were they? _I don’t know._

How did you kill them? _I don’t remember._

_They faced me, and they died._

She lowers her hand and puckers her lips. Then she snarls at her reflection, showing her teeth and opening her eyes wide. 

She chuckles at herself in the mirror. She looks like something out of her own nightmares. Lean and muscular and scarred. Painted not like a soldier but like the bringer of death she’s become. 

She glances down at her right hand. Slim and delicate, with a jagged curl of bone-white scars near her knuckles. Her first scar, and not one made by any enemy. She touches the scar with her other hand. Runs her finger along it and closes her eyes. 

“Show me your hand,” he’d said. “You’re bleeding.” 

She’d presented it, still curled tight like she wanted to try something. Like maybe she could make him hurt too. Like maybe the gods would give her that much, even if she did mix up the words to the old prayers. 

But then he’d ordered her to open her hand so he could get a better look. And she’d done it. What else was there to do? 

He’d reached down and touched her hand. It hurt too much, but she remembers he was gentle. That she’d wondered, even as she winced, how somebody so massive could touch her so lightly. 

He’d pinched his fingers around—something. Something that stung, a sharp little burn, and she’d yelped and yanked her hand away even as he dropped a tiny sliver into his open palm. 

She’d clutched her hand tight against her chest and his face had darkened. “Put your hand back out. I need to see if there are more of them.” 

“It will hurt.” 

He’d shaken his head. “That’s how you know that something is worth doing.” 

She hadn’t understood it. But he’d ordered her to present her hand again, and he’d said it like he’d said things on her home world. 

Like a general giving a command. 

So she did it, and when his fingers slid over her hand again she just stared at him, willing herself not to wince. When he’d found something else, she’d hissed but bit her lip hard so at least she wouldn’t scream. He’d noticed and praised her. Then he’d torn the hem of his shirt to make a bandage. 

“You should have Ebony Maw look at that too,” he’d said when he was finished. 

She’d known from his wry little smile that she must have made a face, so she’d nodded and tried not to scowl. 

“Why did you do it, child?” he’d asked again. “You said you didn’t want to see yourself. Why is that?” 

“My paint came off. Weeks ago!” 

“Your paint?” 

She remembers glaring up at him, so surprised she forgot she wasn’t supposed to get angry. “Only cowards have bare faces.” 

She’d clapped her good hand over her mouth as soon as the words came out, like she thought she might have been able to stop them. 

But he didn’t look angry. Just… thoughtful, his brow furrowed like he was trying to remember something. “When I found you, you had paint on your forehead.” 

“It washed off and now it’s gone, and I got mad because—“ 

“You didn’t want to see yourself without it.” 

“Yeah.” She’d looked down. Saying it to someone who didn’t even know seemed a little stupid now. 

“I’m sorry, child.” He’d reached out to wrap his hand around her head like he didn’t mind touching someone whose head said _Disgrace. “_ I didn’t know.” 

Part of her had wanted to scream and yell and pound her fists against any part of him she could reach and not care if it tore her hand open worse, because how did you show up to a planet and line everybody up like livestock and kill them and _not understand anything at all?_  

But the other part of her whispered… if they had lived, could her parents see her like this, bare-faced and terrified, and wrap their arms around her like Thanos was doing? He had no obligation to treat her like something precious when all she did was hide. 

She’d flinched under his hand. But she hadn’t pulled away. 

“You will be a warrior,” he’d said again. “Your name will be Proxima Midnight, and you will have no need of fear.” 

She’d said nothing more to him. She’d tried to look proud, like she believed it. But she wasn’t quite sure if she managed it. So after a minute she’d gone off like he said, seen Ebony Maw about her hand, and gone to bed, her hand stinging and her dignity bruised. 

But just a few days later, she’d gone into the bathroom one morning and found a little jar of face paint. Blue for a warrior, even though she hadn’t told him anything about the colors. Blue for a warrior and smelling like home. 

It still smells right. She runs her fingers over her scar one last time and then pulls her hand away. She picks up the little container of makeup and lifts it to her nose and sniffs. She’s forgotten so much else. So many sights and sounds and tastes. She tries to think in her first language and whole phrases come up blank. 

But she has always had this, and it has always been the same, through wheels and wheels of years. 

She puts down the little jar and opens her eyes. She smiles at the thing looking back from the mirror. The thing she has become.

_My name is Proxima Midnight._

_And I have no need of fear._


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Open communication with people you care about? What is that and how does it work again? Nebula wishes she knew. Rampant eye-rolling will have to suffice.
> 
> At least there's a mission to focus on.

“Get in the craft, Nebula. You’re the one driving.” 

Nebula can’t roll her eyes. Not while she’s busy accessing output from her cybernetics. But she can make a point of not moving, so she tilts her head toward her sister’s voice and says, “Gamora. I am running an internal diagnostic. I will come in when it has finished.” 

She’s not sure why she’s disappointed. Her sister is always like this. And the others are worse. 

She waits for her systems to output their message—as expected, they’re functioning at capacity—and walks toward the door of the ship too slowly, just because she can. It’s petty, and if her siblings find out they’ll mock her and not Gamora, but it’s satisfying.

A little, at least. 

She sits down in the pilot’s seat and extends a finger toward a port in the console. Her finger unfolds, all wires and metal. The tip, now a tiny sliver of metal, locks in the port, and she feels a sharp little jolt of electricity as her systems integrate with the ship. Outputs flicker in front of her eyes, too fast to read but she knows their contents by now anyway. Identity recognized. Access granted. A few more shifting prompts that mean she’s set the controls as she prefers them. Then the last one, allowing her control through her own systems, as long as the ship is holding a steady course. 

And no one happens to be shooting at them. 

She turns to Gamora. “We are searching for a detection device?” 

“Yeah. The Galnax system is dampening their ships’ signals somehow. If we send our fleet in there without unscrambling them—“ 

“Our armies take heavy losses.” 

Gamora chuckles and shakes her head. “Not bad.” 

Nebula presses her fingers to a panel and the bay door slides open, slow and ponderous. “Intelligent enough to see us coming. Not intelligent enough to understand why.” 

Gamora says something, but Nebula has the controls to work. And takeoff is easy, a skill she learned so long ago that no one can fault her technique, not even if they are trying. She breathes, slow and steady, and savors the feeling of beginning to soar. 

No sooner, it seems, has the craft leveled off than Gamora is talking again. “I said I’m not sure it’s stupidity that makes them act against us.” 

Nebula narrows her eyes. “Fear, then.” 

“Yeah.” 

“But it is not useful. Neither to them, nor to us.” 

“Says the one who helped our sibling dissolve a dying slug.” 

Nebula smirks. “They deserved it. And from what I recall, I gave the salt to you.” 

“So that’s what that was.” 

Nebula lets her smile widen. “You should know that. You are the one who used it.” 

Gamora settles into her seat. “That’s fair.” 

Nebula wants to laugh. It is… pleasant to see her sister relax like this. To see her laugh at her own oversights, rather than at Nebula’s. Out in the far reaches of space where neither one of them has to keep track of every mistake. 

And yet. 

If she dared to relax like that in front of her siblings, at least two of them would question her attentiveness or accuse her of softness. And yet here Gamora sits, stretching out like only her comfort matters. 

If Father were here, he might even smile. 

 _You spoke to him. A few weeks back. Or so he said._

_He said you told him to talk with me. He went to find me in the sparring room after that._

_When he did, he said that even you have flaws. Do you know that?_

She looks at Gamora out of the corners of her eyes. _What would you say if I asked you about it, sister?_

 _Did you know he would say such a thing?_ _Would you know why?_

_Or would you roll your eyes at me and claim not to know what I am talking about? Or say I care too much what Father thinks—as though you could survive a day without his favor?_  

Nebula sighs. She looks out the viewport and squints like she’s concentrating. “Belyan Torus Twelve.” 

Gamora leans forward to look. A bitter pride wells up in Nebula. She never asked for the enhancements that supposedly perfected her vision. But at least she can see things Gamora can’t. 

She waits just long enough to irritate Gamora and increases the magnification. 

The Torus is a ring of metal, bright with lights and jagged with the shapes of ships docked on its surface. Nebula frowns. It’s haphazard and inelegant, nothing like the uniformity of Father’s fleets. 

 _Unchecked life,_ she thinks, and shivers. 

But that isn’t her problem. At least not for the moment. She blinks and looks again, and this time the ships aren’t the only things she notices. A few charred scratches and pits on the surface of the hull reveal that someone, at some point, most likely shot at it. 

Hopefully not recently. Though that might make things more interesting. 

And if things did get interesting, Nebula could think of worse people to have at her back than Gamora. She feels a small smile tug at her lips again. 

“It’s a ring,” Gamora says. “Busy, yes. But why build your outpost around nothing?” 

“They built the first one around Belyan itself, I believe.” A moment of access to her databanks confirmed it. “When they first began to fear collapse.” 

Gamora blanched. “Collapse? Is Belyan still—?” 

“Inhabited, yes. But most who can leave do it as soon as a new Torus is built.” 

Gamora lets out a long sigh and doesn’t respond. 

“The Belyan home world has not prospered as its outposts have,” Nebula says. “But it, and its people, did survive.” 

Gamora nods. She’s still not saying anything. 

“That is what matters,” Nebula says, just to fill the silence. “That hey managed to save themselves.” 

“Right.” 

Gamora lapses into silence again. Nebula isn’t sure what she’s thinking. But heavy in her own mind is _Not every world can save itself_. And saying that out loud won’t ease this tension, whatever it’s about.

Nor will reminding her sister—or herself—what their model is for. They both know that already. They both know perfectly well why her father and her eldest sibling spend so much time studying and refining it. 

And Nebula certainly couldn’t do it. As irritating as she finds Gamora’s tendency to act without thinking, she’s glad she isn’t the one whose calculations decide. Which worlds to fly to first. Whether to come early or late. Whether to wreak devastation on a world whose people are too content to be afraid… or to let that world come ever closer to devouring itself because there’s a chance its people might, possibly, understand.

Gamora’s looking at her. She thanks the stars for small mercies and pays more attention than it warrants. “Yes?” 

“I didn’t say anything.” 

“No. But you have a question.” 

Gamora doesn’t speak right away. After a moment, she tilts her head and says, “What about the others? The people who left for the Toruses?” 

Nebula blinks. That’s all Gamora is thinking about? Are all younger sisters this frivolous, or is it just that Gamora is pampered? 

Still, it’s a question she can answer without pain. She allows herself a slow sigh of relief. “There are dozens of Toruses now. All have become popular trade centers.” 

The starfield outside the craft ripples. A grid of light appears, the lines and diagonals of a shape built of polygons. A projection of some sort? Nebula shifts her attention to better study it with her cybernetic eye. But even as she looks, the pattern shimmers and fades, the polygons filling in with a metallic bluish gray, the sharp angles between the vertices smoothing. 

Ships. Three. Kree by their shape, but not by their size. Or their obvious state of disrepair. Or the inelegant modifications that look like someone slapped them on at the last maintenance station. 

Nebula frowns. Most Kree are as loyal to their Empire as she and her siblings are to Father. Which means these are either very strange Kree, or people clever enough to steal their ships.

“Trade centers?” 

More pointless questions. But Gamora is looking at the ships too, and she certainly seems to be paying attention. Nebula increases the magnification. “Frequented by whom exactly?” 

“People who need a place to hide.” She frowns. 

“People like us, then.” 

Nebula’s head snaps up. She glares at a vulgar slogan crudely painted on one of the ships’ hulls. “Those people are nothing like us.” 

“Is that so?” Gamora chuckles. “Then let’s go buy our deconcealer somewhere less illicit.” 

Nebula lets herself sigh a little too loudly and stares out the viewport, scanning the disordered surface of the Torus for a half-decent space to land.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nebula and Gamora go buy a thing. Simple, right?
> 
> Not really.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Ilya_Boltagon for beta reading!

“They were nothing like us,” Nebula insists. 

If Gamora argues with her, she’ll lose the argument. At least right now. They look more like those strange people than Nebula wants to admit. They look like wanderers out in the far reaches. Not like warriors with a purpose, trained to be weapons and taught never to falter. 

It’s not that they’re hiding. Not really. There’s only so much you can keep secret when you look like Nebula does, with cybernetics covering most of her face. It’s impossible to hide them when they’re not quite the same shade of blue as her skin. She’s replaced a few of the metal panels on her cheeks with dark blue plates, hoping people will notice the pattern and overlook the person wearing it, but she can’t assume no one can tell. 

For Gamora, hiding is easier, but even then… the paint on her sister’s face gives her skin a golden sheen. But that doesn’t quite mask that it’s green. And she hasn’t seen many other green people so far, even though the crowds are so large it’s unnerving. 

It’s not so bad when it’s a hive of Chitauri. They at least are all of one mind, and tend to look and think and speak similarly, if not identically. 

This isn’t that. This is bewildering. This is color and heat and noise and others’ limbs too close to her own, and not being able to chop the offending arms off for invading her space. If she did, it would only draw further attention. 

And make her identity irrefutably obvious. In a way that would make tolerating her—and her sister’s—presence here impossible. 

Gamora looks back at her. She looks… irritated, as she usually does, but nowhere near as anxious as Nebula feels. “Are you still going on about that?”

“They are… aimless. I do not like it.”

“Most people are.” 

“And I do not like it.” 

Gamora shrugs. “Then let’s finish this mission so we can leave.” 

She whirls around, apparently not bothering to wait for a response. She wears her hair in heavy braids, and the assemblage flops against her back. 

Nebula shakes her head. Still, the braids look better on Gamora than she will ever admit, elaborately woven and twisted together. They should. Nebula styled them herself. 

Gamora hates the style, but that can only be an asset when they’re trying to lay low. And whatever Gamora prefers, it doesn’t take long for Nebula’s enhanced hands to wind her sister’s hair into intricate patterns. 

And doing it is… enjoyable. The repetition is soothing. Almost like meditation, except that meditation usually happens before a purge, and slow breathing can only do so much. However calm she feels sitting in the meditation room with her siblings, there is always the knowledge of what must come next. 

She frowns at herself as soon as she thinks it. _Everything is preparation,_ she chides herself. _Even these small things have a purpose. However pleasant they may be._

 _I must not forget it._  

“Very well,” she says, looking at the crowd and wishing she had her sister’s forbearance. “This way.” 

###

The shop is a blasted building at the end of a blasted street. Perhaps it means neglect. Perhaps it means brawls. But Nebula sees an array of equipment mounted on the roof, and however haphazard it looks, that means two things: visitors are being monitored. By someone who knows what they are doing. 

Gamora glances at it too. _Good. Then_ _you’re not going to be a complete fool._

But of course, this is Gamora. Which means all that she does is glare at the offending technology and go inside anyway. Nebula makes sure to get a good look at the roof so her databanks will at least save something she can study later and follows her sister inside. 

“May I help you?” sneers a voice. 

“We’re looking for something,” Gamora answers. 

“We have an appointment,” Nebula says, stepping up before Gamora says something she shouldn’t. 

“Do you now?” 

There’s a metallic clatter, and a gangly being emerges with a clatter from the back of the shop. He’s holding a small, glowing tablet between spindly fingers. He’s wearing a long robe that might once have been vivid blue but is now smeared with oil and dirt. 

 _Does he repair these things himself?_ If he does, that means he knows something about the things he sells. But if he does, it also means those things have been through a few sets of hands. Nebula frowns. As much as she enjoys these little missions, sometimes she wishes they could trade openly rather than slink around. 

 _Or steal from the purged._  

She wills the thought away and looks at the person who spoke. He’s tall, a long slender neck raising his head high above them. It bends and he glares down at them, blinking large, round eyes. 

Nebula suspects it’s meant to look intimidating. But all she can think about is how scrawny that neck is and how easy it would be to wrap her metal arm around it and squeeze. 

“Our names were given as Malachite and Static,” Gamora says, sounding as unimpressed as Nebula feels. “We were told Lorvek would be expecting us.” 

A smile tugs at the corners of Nebula’s mouth. “We are assuming that’s you.” 

The round eyes widen. His head sways closer and he blinks at Gamora. “You look young.” 

Gamora scoffs. “Does it matter?” 

He looks down at the tablet in his hand, taps it with a finger, and hums thoughtfully. Then he looks up. “Not if you’re as rich as this thing says you are, no.” 

 _Greed._ Nebula keeps her expression carefully blank. So many of these people are so small-minded. _There are more important things in this universe than one merchant's prosperity._

Still, his wide eyes look hungry now, and that’s something they can take advantage of. 

He turns and slinks toward the back wall, still tilting his head to keep an eye on his visitors. _At least he’s not both greedy and stupid._

As soon as he comes within his long arms’ reach of the shelves, he reaches out for things lying on them, pulls them down, and tosses them aside with mutters of irritation. _You expect to be handsomely paid and yet you don’t know where you keep things?_ Nebula frowns, taps her foot in impatience, and looks closer. 

He grabs at a boxy contraption that looks well-crafted, if old and rusted, and tosses it aside with a loud snort. When it hits the floor, the wall of junk lights up, as though in response to a key unlocking a door. The edges of the wall flare brightly once and slide aside to reveal a pristine and polished metal shelf, the objects on it meticulously arranged. 

“Nice,” Gamora says. 

 _You’re not stupid at all, are you?_  

Lorvek doesn’t look at Gamora. He studies the shelf, walking from one corner of the revealed wall to the other, staring for long moments at each of the treasures on it. After a long moment he selects one, a cylinder small enough to fit comfortably in his hand. He pulls it off the shelf with care, his slender fingers barely touching it. 

“This is what you’re looking for,” he says, holding it out to Gamora. “Mark Seven Deconcealer. Direct from Knowhere.” 

Nebula blinks, but it’s Gamora who opens her mouth first. “That little thing? How much can that detect?” 

“That depends how much you amplify it.” Lorvek tilts his head in Nebula’s direction. “Which I’d think someone with that much cybernetics would’ve guessed, but the two of you don’t like one another very much, do you?” His gaze fixes on Nebula, wide and unblinking. “I don’t think you’ve spoken to one another since you came in.” 

“Let me have a look at that,” Gamora snaps. She steps closer and reaches for the device. 

“Suit yourself, young one,” he says, letting it fall into his palm with an odd little flourish. 

Nebula is already scanning it with her cybernetics when he stretches out his palm. She isn’t certain what danger is represented by the glint her systems overlay detects on one side of it, but she doesn’t have time to analyze it. She just lunges, grabbing for the device with her metal hand before her sister takes it first. 

“Gamora!” she calls. “Do not touch it! Get back!”

Her hand closes over the deconcealer just as she catches a glimpse of Gamora leaping aside. _Good. You listened._

She has no time even to smile. The sensors in her metal hand register something— _heat. Too hot. That isn’t right_.

Then they flare. All of them. All at once. Not just in her hand, but in her entire cybernetic, a blinding cacophony of pain flaring through the circuitry. A blast flings her backward. Somewhere within the agony screaming through her sensor net she feels the jolt of impact. 

 _I hit the wall._ She blinks to clear her vision, but even if she can see with her organic eye, it’s not helping. The other is still flooded with light and flickering with static, so distracting she can’t focus on what her flesh is telling her. 

Everything is pain. What has happened to her hand? Her arm? Her shoulder? She feels only fire, so bright and searing she cannot tell where it ends and she begins. 

Her head lolls and she wills herself to focus. _It’s only pain. You know how to endure it. You’ve done so all your life. Get up._

 _Get up. Get up. Get up._ She must let her systems repair themselves. She must stand, and she must move. She must— 

 _—find Gamora._  

She reaches back to brace herself against the wall. Only one of her hands responds, the one she’s had from birth. What happened to the other? It sends only signals of pain, so intense she can’t distinguish the problem. She pulls herself up, biting back a snarl of protest, only to sink back down again, weak and ashamed.

“What have you done?” a familiar voice roars, somewhere across the room. Or, perhaps, the solar system. Some distance she cannot calculate at the moment. And has even less hope of crossing. 

She tries to focus on the voice. Light flares in her vision again and a new wave of pain—from her arm? From her shoulder?—makes her dizzy. She can’t seem to clear away the white light that consumed her. 

With a heavy sigh, she permits herself to lean against the wall again. She should be cursing herself for her failure, and she knows it. But when she hears that voice again, all incandescent rage, a smile tugs at one corner of her mouth. 

_If you sound like that, you are unharmed._

_If you are unharmed, I did not fail._

_Not at what matters._

She lowers her head and lets unconsciousness claim her.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hurting Gamora's sister is a bad idea.
> 
> Hurting Gamora's sister and implying she shouldn't care is the worst idea.
> 
> It tends to end with someone dying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Ilya_Boltagon for beta!

“What have you done?” 

Gamora doesn’t give Lorvek time to answer her. She lunges before the words leave her mouth, instinct and rage driving her on. Lorvek hits the wall together with a satisfying thud and a flare of light that’s distinctly less satisfying. 

_Force fields? Really?_

Then again, of course someone who planned to hand someone a bomb would equip himself with something protective. She cries out in frustration and slams her forearm against his neck, just under his chin. The field flares. She can’t choke him, but it also can’t repel her. At least not after the explosion. He squawks in protest and the rest of his neck wriggles in a futile attempt at resistance. 

“Did you think I don’t know who you are?” He puckers his lips like he means to spit, but his own force field stops him. “Did you think I don’t know who sent you?” 

“If you know who sent us, you know this accomplished nothing.” _Except hurt Nebula._ Gamora clenches a fist and fights the urge to glance over at the corner where her sister lies. _She moved. You saw her move. If she can move, she can regenerate._  

“Maybe so. But it could’ve.” 

“No.” Gamora slid her free hand down to her hip, where her sword lay sheathed and retracted. Probably overkill, but she had a force field to deactivate if she wanted to hurt this guy. “It won’t stop me. And there are four more of us anyway.” 

“Four more of you?” 

Gamora ignores the question and coaxes her blade free as silently as she can manage. There’s no room to extend it, but she has no need to get fancy. Even folded up, Godslayer is perfectly good for stabbing things. 

And the blade’s alien metal should be able to short out that force field. If it’s as close to depleted as Gamora thinks it is. 

“Is that how you see yourselves?” Lorvek is saying. She pretends to pay attention, if only so he’ll keep himself distracted. “Is that how you see each other? As interchangeable? Expendable?” 

She glances sidelong at Nebula’s corner, bright rage crackling through her. It takes all her willpower not to turn her head. _Focus_ , she repeats to herself. _As long as she’s breathing, her systems can repair themselves. So deal with the threat first_. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

“Is that how he sees you?” 

She presses the blade against his abdomen. The force field flares with a weak little burst of heat. A problem, but not much of one. Not for this blade. “You know I’m going to kill you.” 

“Then do it.” He snarls, a deeper sound than she thought his skinny throat could make. “I’m already dead.” 

“Because you chose to throw your life away,” Gamora growls back. “You can’t stop us, and you’re a fool but you’re not an idiot. You know nothing will stop him.” 

“Why would my life matter to you—” He squeezes his big eyes shut against some remembered pain. –“when the life I had is gone? Because Thanos took everything I loved and left me with… this?" 

Gamora looks up. She stares straight at him. Usually it’s Nebula who bothers with things like this. Displays. Threats. Showing off. Savoring the pain of some idiot who could just die quickly and get the hell out of the way. 

But this is going to be messy, and she isn’t sure she minds. 

“Because some of us chose to survive,” she says, and thrusts the blade at his belly. 

The force field flares with light. It’s weak, like she suspected, the kind of light that barely makes her blink. She feels the heat through the hilt of her sword-turned-knife, but only tightens her grip. 

She feels it give way, the blade sinking into flesh, soft and unresisting. She knows there will be screams and she winces. She’s supposed to be an assassin. Noise will mean she has to get out of there fast. 

And get Nebula out of there, too. 

It’s Nebula she thinks of when the screams start. She smiles because Nebula would, a cold and bitter pleasure, and waits a longer moment than she should before pulling her blade free. Lorvek sags against her, his cries becoming moans of pain. His eyes are open but unseeing, the eyes of a beast lost in its suffering. His head sways on his long neck. 

She draws back. She doesn’t bother to look down at him in triumph. She’s already had her moment, and if Nebula is awake, she saw it already. She extends her blade with a flick of her wrist and cleaves his neck. 

That done, she turns away. She’s across the room in moments, Godslayer tucked away and sheathed already. “Nebula!” 

Her sister lies limp in the corner, a tangle of metal limbs sprawled out where she fell. In the debris of the blasted shop, devices and scraps scattered everywhere, she looks almost like she belongs there. Another device. Another toy. Another object. 

Gamora shakes her head to clear it. She can’t let herself be ruled by her emotions. Not when she needs to know how badly Nebula is injured. She narrows her eyes in concentration and looks again. 

Nebula’s metal arm is battered and broken, torn asunder by the blast. Two pieces of metal hang, limp and disconnected, from their mount in her shoulder. The split is so wide there’s no way they can knit themselves together again. The edges glitter with nanites, trying and failing to bridge the massive crack. 

 _Which means she’s alive, at least._ _And likely repaired enough to be conscious._ Gamora allows herself a small sigh of relief. 

The shattered arm ends at a blackened, melted wrist. Nebula’s hand is gone entirely. Gamora winces, seeing it. She shouldn’t be fazed, it’s not a wound to anything vital, but all she can think is _That isn’t going to fix itself either._

Which means Nebula will need repairs. Gamora spits a curse. That will mean more sulking and more anger and more fear, and she doesn’t need more of that from her fool of a sibling, not when she’s been _trying_ to— 

She cuts off the thought. A broken arm is easier to deal with than most of the alternatives, even if it does send her sister into another sulking fit. “Nebula…?”

Her sister’s head lifts. Dark eyes dart around the room, unfocused and unsteady, and finally fix on Gamora.

“Are you…?” She stops. _Are you all right_ has an obvious answer. And one that won’t tell Gamora what she really needs to know. “Are you stable, at least?”

Nebula’s lips twitch in a tiny smile. 

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nebula is awake.
> 
> Which can mean only one thing.
> 
> Let the bickering commence!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Ilya_Boltagon for beta and plot-related nitpicking!

“We cannot leave yet.”

Nebula frowns up at Gamora. The minor injuries to her back have repaired themselves, and all that remains is heat as metal shifts under flesh and the slight itch of healing.

Her left arm is all fire.

The sensor net flares, so much of it active she can’t tell exactly what hurts. Only that what once served as a limb is now a locus of agony, so intense it threatens her ability to concentrate. She snarls in frustration and dampens the sensory input just enough for some relief. Father will punish her if he discovers it— _the pain of one’s failures teaches an important lesson. Do not run from it, my children, for it will find you anyway_ —but if she wants to salvage anything from this mission, she cannot permit herself to be distracted. And whatever happens later, she knows she can endure.

Gamora huffs in obvious irritation. “Nebula. He blew your arm up.” She reaches for her. “I’m getting you home.”

Nebula bats her hand away with the good hand she has left. She wills away a burst of pain in her damaged arm and stands. “I am injured, not an invalid.”

“We still have to get you out of here.” She turns to look at Lorvek’s body, and Nebula follows her gaze. His abdomen is covered in purple, slimy blood. And he is headless. Nebula smirks. _So that slender neck was a vulnerability._

Gamora seems less pleased. “And that kill wasn’t clean.”

Nebula looks at her. Her garments—and her right wrist and hand—are smeared with purple. Nebula raises an eyebrow and fights not to wince at a spike of pain in her arm.

“Lorvek got loud. You would’ve liked it.” Gamora snickers, but Nebula hears no malice in it. “If you’d bothered to stay awake.”

Nebula laughs. Static fuzzes in the corner of her cybernetic eye. She hisses but keeps laughing. Gamora is right. She would have enjoyed that. It is pleasant, now and again, to hear someone other than herself scream. “My apologies.”

But Gamora doesn’t return her taunt. She frowns at the body instead. “Which means we can’t stay here.”

“We cannot return both damaged and empty-handed.”

“You’re the only one who’s damaged. And we need to get you home. You need repairs, however stubborn you’re feeling.”

“Sister. It is only pain. It is… my arm is not made of flesh. I am not bleeding.”

“Idiot. I don’t give a damn. That has to hurt, and it can’t be good for you.”

“It is excruciating. But I will be in far worse pain if I turn around and go back.”

Gamora winces.

“And failure might redound to you as well.” Nebula smirks. “You did attempt to grab a bomb.”

“And you succeeded at it.” Gamora flings her arm wide, indicating piles of debris scattered everywhere. “Even if there’s another deconcealer somewhere in this mess, he might have rigged that to blow too.”

“The mess was a distraction. Look at the shelves instead.”

The objects on them have clearly been jostled, and a few have fallen onto the floor. Their polished surfaces gleam amid the clutter.

Gamora scowls and looks down. “So our mission just turned into ‘pick through the shiny things.’”

“If there isn’t one on the shelves, yes.”

“Well, at least that narrows it down. But I didn’t get much of a look at it. That’s what I was trying to do when—”

“When you asked our host to hand you an incendiary device.” Nebula smirks.

“You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”

Nebula rolls her eyes. “Perhaps you would not know what it looks like.” She snickers. It feels good, a spark of cruel pleasure. It makes ignoring her arm a little easier. “But I do.” She calls up the memory of Lorvek taking down the device with such odd care. Understandable care, now.

Gamora squints at it, and then at the shelves. Nebula scans them for an object resembling the deconcealer-turned-bomb but finds none. She frowns, recalling Lorvek’s voice: _Direct from Knowhere._

Which is distant. Which means there may well not be another. She allows Gamora a moment to realize there are none on the shelves, and another moment to pick through the few precious objects that have fallen on the floor. “I do not detect any in here.”

“Then we’re going back empty-handed anyway. And I was right. You should be resting, and I should be flying us home.”

“You?” Nebula grits her teeth against a wave of pain and nausea that almost makes her want to just let Gamora drive. “I am clearly the superior pilot!”

“One handed? I doubt it. Either way, there’s no point to staying here. So we’re going.”

“No. We are not.” Nebula shifts the projection. “Look.”

“What exactly are we looking at?”

“The roof of this building. Or at least at what had been the roof,” Nebula says, frowning up at a hole in the ceiling. “Where Lorvek installed his own surveillance and security equipment.”

“Including”—Gamora squints at the projection—“that thing right there.” She points.

“Correct.”

“Wait. This is one shop. That would reveal people sneaking around. Not entire ships.”

Nebula sighs, loudly enough that Gamora cannot miss it. “Do you recall what he said to you when you grew suspicious?”

“No. I just remember ducking for cover when you yelled.”

“You asked about the device’s small size. And he said—”

Gamora’s eyes widen. She looks like she might even smile. “That it didn’t matter. Because you could amplify it.”

Nebula nods. She considers adding _That took you long enough_ , but Gamora did just kill the person who blew up her arm. And made a game of it, for Nebula’s sake. She would have to replay the memory some time, determine whether she’d at least been partially conscious for any of it…

“Fine,” Gamora says. “If we know where one of these things is, I’m going to get it.”

“You are covered in blood. You should not be going anywhere. You will only draw attention.”

“And you’re mutilated. You shouldn’t even be moving.”

“Gamora. I told you. I am in pain, but that is all.”

“Fine. But you shouldn’t be making it worse climbing buildings. You’re staying here.” She narrows her eyes. “Unless you want me to tell Father how long it took you to respond to a threat.”

Nebula snarls, hot rage rising in her, almost as bright as the sparks of pain flaring through her sensor net. Her good hand clenches into a fist at her side. “How dare you?”

Gamora meets her gaze. “I said stay here.”

Nebula spits a curse. “Someday I will kill you.”

“Someday maybe you will.” Gamora glances at Nebula’s ruined arm. “But it won’t be today, so sit back down.”

Nebula growls again and bares her teeth. But Gamora is right. She has no chance of besting her today. She shakes her head violently and backs into the corner again, reaching out with her good hand to steady herself and sliding down until she’s resting on the floor again.

“I’ll be right back,” Gamora says, her lip curling in an infuriating little smirk just before she turns to leave.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sad backstories for all! This one's how Thanos went from some creepily prophetic guy on Titan to a trained warrior.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If there's canon about this I don't know it (and don't care.) I like making stuff up.
> 
> Many thanks to Ilya_Boltagon for beta.

The image is old.

At least, that’s what Thanos’s children would say if they saw it. They’d find fault with the colors, the projection, the image’s compression. Technology changes quickly, and this image is older than any of them.

He’s not projecting it into the air around him. Instead he’s holding a tablet in his hand. It’s a little too small for him, but that doesn’t matter. It’s better to have something he can hold in his hands. At least when he’s looking at this picture. He runs a finger over the surface of the tablet, just for something to do with his hand, and then looks down at it.

He’s not smiling in the picture. Not really. Not the way the person perched on his shoulder is, a wide inviting grin showing pointed teeth.

Too wide a grin. Very few people in his long life have smiled like that around him, and he knows it means fondness, but it makes him queasy to look at it. An old feeling that had grown familiar to him over the months he’d spent on the world his friend had made her home.

_I never told you what I intended. You never would have helped me if I had._

_How would you have looked at me if you found out?_

When he’d first found her drones, he’d destroyed them.

It wasn’t so much that someone found him. He’d expected that. He’d barely cobbled together a working ship from some ancient spare he’d found. Forgotten and abandoned on the moon that had become his prison. He was surprised he could get it to fly. Surprised it hadn’t fallen apart the moment he hit escape velocity.

He shakes his head. He does not cry, but tears gather in his eyes. Stubborn and ancient tears that have waited an eon to fall. That still might if he drops his guard and lets them.

He’d almost hoped his ship would fall apart. When the transmissions from Titan had stopped, he’d felt like he’d died with them. Like the thing left pacing his prison wasn’t him. Just some stubborn remnant that forgot to waste away.

But whatever remained of him, whole or shattered, had something left to do. Which meant he had to live.

 _I will rest when this is over,_ he tells himself now, just as he had then. _Whether rest means peace or death._

So he'd flown on, through reaches of unfamiliar space, hoping a centuries-old navigation system he could barely use would lead him far away enough no one would guess at his origins.

He’d wandered for as long as his provisions allowed. Unwise, he knew, but in those early days he couldn’t bring himself to land on any world, no matter how much he yearned to speak to someone. He had failed. Why should he deserve anything but emptiness?

Eventually his need to survive had prompted him to land somewhere. If he starved, he’d only fail again.

He found a wild world, long stretches of forest dotted with cities that looked tiny in comparison. That suited him—growing things meant food, and as long as he was careful he could learn what would sustain him. Cultivate it himself if necessary.

And after long centuries of watching his home world shrivel by inches, rich soil turning to dry dust where nothing grew, he wept at the sight of so much green.

He found a valley in the wilds clear enough to land his ship without being too obvious and hoped the universe that had already taken everything from him had mercy enough to give him time.

Then the drones had found him, and he’d destroyed them.

Too quickly and too messily, but he hadn’t known enough then to study them with appropriate care. And he’d been more interested in making sure they recorded as little as possible than in learning how they worked.

And it felt good, in those early days, to crush something in his hands or trample it underfoot. He’d been alone for so long.

He hadn’t allowed himself anger. Not at his people. He’d felt it, of course, a black seething thing coiled deep within his mind. But everything he did was for his people, and if he meant to carry on, everything he would do would be done in their memory. 

If he meant to learn from this, to wring something from this failure, he had things to do, and raging wasn’t one of them. He’d allowed himself despair and grief, but nothing else.

So he’d come to like the drones. Destroying them gave him something, at least. That anger hadn’t left him, not completely, and crushing them gave him somewhere to direct it.

If he meant to save a universe that would only scorn him—that might well try to kill him next time, rather than just send him away again—he would have to learn both stealth and war. To become so good at both that whole planets would fall to him. Lest they fall to something worse.

And all he’d done on Titan was keep gardens.

But whatever use he found for his watchers, he’d soon figured out that whoever had sent the drones was curious, not hostile. Despite his violence toward them, the next ones had only tried harder to keep out of his reach.

That had helped him too. He’d learned to track the things tracking him.

Eventually whoever sent the drones grew tired of the game. He’d caught sight of a shimmer of metal in the trees, just out of his reach. Any move he made, it mirrored.

“What do you want?” he’d finally asked.

It answered in a language he didn’t recognize, even with a translator implant, then another and another, until finally it found a language his implant could parse.

After an awkward moment of synchronization, he heard, “Stop breaking my drones.”

“Stop sending them then,” he answered.

“If you want to fight, I can help you train.” The drone tilted its camera mount at him, apparently focused on his feet. “Though I’m not sure why you can’t just stomp on whoever’s bothering you.”

“Then you do know what I’m doing.”

“Right now you’re just breaking everything I build. But from the look on your face when you’re doing it, I’ve met people like you before. And there’s always some reason they go around smashing things.”

He remembers blinking in surprise and smiling at the cleverness of… whoever this was. “If you have a more efficient suggestion, show yourself.”

For a moment, all he saw was a flash of reddish orange in one of the trees. Then something—no, _someone_ \--scurried up the trunk of the tree, gripping at the bark with clawed hands and feet. They found a branch near his eye level, crawled onto it and straightened into a half-squat, waving a long tail for balance.

A tail tipped with metal, shaped into a silvery pincer. He looks down at the picture and chuckles.

She doesn’t look quite as ridiculous perched on his shoulder as she’d looked to him then. Perhaps she isn’t. Perhaps it is only fondness that makes him think so. Fondness and the bitter knowledge that no matter what has happened, she died long ago.

Generations ago, by the reckoning of her people.

He should be used to it by now, how quickly other beings die.

Her body is slender and long, though she’s far smaller than he is, or indeed than any of his people. Her skin is bright orange and wrinkled, and her ears swivel from side to side on top of her head, restless and full of energy. It makes sense, for a being that makes its home in trees. A smile tugs at his lip, remembering it. The world he’d found was bright and verdant, and though he soon learned it wasn’t her original home, he’d seen right away how well she belonged there.

She has no implants that he can see, but every part of her is festooned with metal. Tools hang at her belt but they also sit at her shoulders and cover her long belly. Silvery metal tips her claws, and she peers out from the picture through wide goggles whose frame is made of the same stuff. And then there’s the pincer tipping her tail, a device of her own design that lets her use it as an extra hand when she’s tinkering with one of her inventions.

In the image, she’s waving a hand, curled into some elaborate gesture that rivals even his eldest son’s finger-signs. She’d made the same gesture from her branch that day when they met, and he’d soon learned it was a greeting.

That hand sign, and a shake of the tail. He’d realized she expected him to wave his tail at her as well and explained he didn’t have one. He chuckles, remembering it. It shouldn’t have been so amusing, but after so long, it felt good to laugh at something.

She shrugged, wrapped her tail around one of his arms for a moment instead, and started talking as soon as she retracted it. He caught “my name is Zirik,” and something about proper fighting stances for beings of his size, but she’d prattled on so quickly his implant had difficulty converting it all.

He introduced himself as well, half out of politeness and half to make it less obvious he missed most of what she was saying. He got as far as “I am Thanos” when she squeaked with laughter, bobbing her head.

“What was that?”

“My name.”

“It’s—?” She trilled a word that sounded vaguely like his name.

“That is… close,” he said. It wasn’t, but he’d not only found a friendly being but a possible ally, so he wasn’t about to take too much issue with her pronunciation. He repeated his name and asked, “What is so entertaining about it?”

She’d bobbed her head, still grinning. “That word I said? In my native language, it means ‘small.’”

He’d huffed in annoyance and repeated himself, and Zirik had made a few half-hearted attempts to say it correctly. But it soon became evident that as far as Zirik was concerned, his name was “Tiny.”

He’d hated it at first. It made no sense whatsoever, and her high little giggles when she said it only made it more obnoxious. But over time he’d grown used to her shouting it at him, cheering him on as he battled her drones or chiding him for mistakes like dropping his guard.

He shakes his head at the memory and almost smiles, just as he had then. “You are ridiculous, old friend,” he says, and runs a finger over the image.

_Were. You were ridiculous._

That thought pains him, and he closes his eyes.

It shouldn’t bother him. Not as much as it does. By all accounts, Zirik lived a long life. A century and a half in Darian years. Long-lived not just for her people, but for most sapient species he’s encountered.

All the same, he wishes he had more than this. No Darian will ever look at the warlord he has become and the devastation he commands and bob their head and call him Tiny.

He shakes his head. He should be glad of it. He no longer needs to hide his nature or his purpose. He never needs evade a question again. Or worry that the truth will sever the first bond he has made and the last one he has left.

He has his army. And his Children. And his Gamora, as full of fire as Zirik was of energy and laughter.

And whatever he has done to them—whatever pain he could not spare Gamora or any of the others—he has never had to lie.

That was the hardest part. Zirik had asked, over and over, where he came from. Why someone who knew nothing of battle and war trained for it like his life depended on it.

_It's not my life that matters, old friend. It never was._

She'd assumed, in the beginning, that he must be looking for revenge. She’d imagined some great nemesis, even taller and broader than Thanos himself, and dragged her tools and materials to his valley and spent weeks constructing a drone bigger than he was, with plating tough enough not to buckle when he punched it.

He still has a piece he ripped from its chassis when he fought it. He keeps it on the upper floors, tucked away in the center of his garden, the only bit of metal amid all the growing things.

He will go to see it after this. To turn it over in his hands and warm it, and remember the days when its own workings heated it, and his touch wasn't necessary.

When she asked him about his rival, wanting to make the massive machine better resemble them, he’d only shaken his head.

He still remembers what she said in answer: _It’s not just one, is it, Tiny? There are a lot of them._

All he’d ever said was _Yes. There are._

She’d asked him nothing else. Only said she’d trained warriors that grew into generals. Into warlords that conquered and razed. She didn’t enjoy it, didn’t condone it, but she taught them all the same.

 _Then continue to teach me,_ he’d answered, and fought the urge to hang his head.  _Please._

And now he too is a warlord, or so the worlds he’s shattered say. He long ago stopped trying to explain himself. He leaves that to his son, and no one listens to him either.

He’d returned, two centuries later, to a world he barely recognized. The once green trees now hunched shriveled and brown. The tiny cities had grown massive, belching waste into the choking air.

He runs his hand over the image again and feels tears come. It’s the only mercy the universe has ever given him. That the world his friend called home had fallen long after they’d parted. That Zirik was dead before his return. That she never had to see the thing she'd trained him to become.

He lets out a slow sigh, wraps a hand around the device displaying the image, and tightens his grip until the edges bite into his skin.

Sometimes that seems too small a mercy.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The thrilling conclusion of The Disastrous Mission That Was Somehow A Success.
> 
> Gamora and Nebula return and present themselves to Murder Dad. Nebula downplays her role in salvaging, uh, absolutely everything, assuming she'll be blamed rather than praised anyway. 
> 
> ...Gamora is having ABSOLUTELY NONE of this, thank you VERY much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Ilya_Boltagon for beta, and pointing out the Sudden Disappearance of Many Siblings in the first draft :-P

“My lord father,” Gamora says, stepping close to Thanos’s throne. She crosses her arms over her chest, lowers herself to one knee, and splays her arms out again with a crisp, fluid motion. “We have returned.”

Nebula copies the gesture as best she can with a shattered arm and tries not to look too envious. She should be the one giving this report. Would be the one giving this report, if not for that idiot Lorvek and his bomb.

Her other siblings know better than to speak, but she can feel their eyes on her. Their shock at the sight of her wound. Their morbid curiosity. Their scorn. She frowns.

At least Father isn’t gawking at her. As usual, he has eyes only for Gamora. His lip quirks in a little smile and his eyes brighten. “Welcome home, little one. Was your mission a success?”

“It was.” With a little flourish, Gamora produces the deconcealer. “But Nebula was… damaged.”

“So I see.” The half-smile uncurls, and the gaze Father turns on Nebula is cold. “How did that happen?”

Nebula looks up. “Lorvek’s offer was a trap. He knew us and hoped to draw us out. The device he gave us hid a bomb. I realized too late what he intended, and I…” She trails off, considering her words carefully.

She hangs her head as if in shame, and realizes she isn’t feigning it. In Lorvek’s shop she had felt only relief at the sound of her sister’s voice. But now… “I could think of no safe solution quickly. So I grabbed it in my metal hand, in hopes that it would absorb the shock.”

“Which it did,” Ebony Maw interjects. He glides over to Nebula and hovers next to her, too close. One of his needles floats out from his robes and pokes at the blackened scrap that used to be her wrist. She hisses in pain but refuses to let herself twitch. “The prosthetic must have absorbed a heavy impact, if it split so badly it failed to reconstruct itself.”

Gamora nods. Nebula shoots an angry glance at her. _Do not interrupt. It would only make this worse._

But Gamora has never been able to stop talking once she has something to say, and Nebula’s signal goes unnoticed. _Or unheeded._ _You idiot._

“Lorvek’s intent was to kill,” Gamora says. “He survived a purge and was bitter and angry, and looking for revenge.”

Father scowls and shakes his head. “On you, and not on me.”

“He could do nothing to you,” Nebula says.

Gamora nods. “But he could try to harm us, if he managed to trick us into being careless.”

“Which he did,” Cull rumbles. He chuckles and casts a significant glance at Nebula’s arm. Nebula’s cheeks heat, but she bites back her rage. If she gives in and says—

“That isn’t how it happened.”

Nebula clamps her lips shut, cursing herself for her own idiocy, before she realizes that was Gamora’s voice and not her own.

 _Sister! What are you doing?_ Nebula turns her head.

Father’s brows knit, but his voice—as always, with Gamora—is gentle. “What do you mean, little one?”

“I mean this isn’t Nebula’s fault, Father.”

“What?” That’s Proxima, who usually manages to keep her outbursts in check. But apparently Gamora’s foolishness is catching. Beside her, Corvus is silent, but his eyes are wide.

“What our brother said is… accurate, however insulting.” Nebula says. “If I had deduced our host’s intent a moment earlier, I would be whole.”

“Nebula, you—” Gamora begins. Nebula cuts her off with a violent shake of her head.

Father’s frown deepens. His gaze bores into Nebula and she trembles, wanting to retreat. But this is a debriefing, and that means she cannot. “What is it? What are you not telling us?”

“I did not… I have not—”

“Enough!” Gamora snarls. “If you won’t say it, I will.”

She looks up at Thanos with the kind of angry expression neither Nebula nor any of their other siblings would dare to put on openly. “Nebula acted quickly because I acted rashly. The fault wasn't hers, Father. It was mine.”

No one speaks, but even Ebony Maw turns to stare at Gamora. Cull and Proxima gape, and Corvus frowns in obvious confusion.

Nebula blinks. How long has she waited to hear those words? How often has she imagined them in her mind? Has she felt a thrill of exultation, thinking of how it will feel to hear her sister utter them at last?

Part of her feels that now, a bright gloating heat that warms her. She raises her head.

But part of her feels queasy, and her mouth is dry.

“Explain.”

Nebula hopes, for a brief moment, that the command is meant for Gamora. But Gamora isn’t the one who Father’s gaze is fixed on.

“Gamora perceived the threat,” Nebula says. “But…”

“Go on.”

“But she did not realize what Lorvek intended. She demanded to see the deconcealer so that she could examine it.”

“Which was exactly what he wanted,” says Corvus, his voice low.

Nebula nods. “When he held it out, his posture was… odd. I suspected he wanted Gamora to take it and I had only a moment to act. So I interposed myself between her and it.”

Father’s brow furrows. “Gamora. Is what your sister says true?”

“She has recordings. Look at those if you don’t believe her.”

“Very well.” He turns to Nebula. “Show them.”

Nebula glares at Gamora, seething. What was it Gamora had threatened her with, back on the Torus, to keep her from climbing the roof? What she’d done just now was far worse. Just because she could.

But Nebula has also been given an order, and cannot disobey. So she rifles through her memory banks for that accursed moment and projects it onto the wall. _It is a recording,_ she reminds herself, and does her best to watch as if what it contains happened to someone else.

She hears Gamora’s voice, impatient and imperious, and then her own cry of warning. A metal arm reaches out. It is, perhaps, too easy to pretend it isn’t hers.

Then the image flashes, light flooding the camera in Nebula’s eye and washing the recording white. There is a cry of pain, a sound of impact. Nebula stares ahead, unblinking, trying not to twitch when her arm twinges in remembered agony.

Mercifully, the image fades to static. Nebula ends the playback and permits herself to close her eyes.

Cull growls, making a long low sound that implies he is impressed.

“That was brave,” says Corvus.

“Stupid, but brave,” agrees Proxima.

_Brave?_

She’s heard Gamora described thus. Often. Any time her rash decisions serve her well, it seems. But… now they are applying it to Nebula herself?

She opens her eyes and glances at Ebony Maw. His expression is carefully neutral, but he’s looking at her. Not at Father.

And Gamora is still a fool. But she is also the one who brought this up in the first place. And she’s still looking directly at Father. Nebula blinks. She did not like watching the footage, and her injury aches, but she did not expect this much.

Not from her older siblings, who barely tolerate her. And not from Gamora, who could have let it go. She lowers her head, unable to respond.

“They are right,” Father says after a long moment. “That was brave.”

Nebula’s head snaps up. Father isn’t smiling, and he isn’t looking at her the way he looks at Gamora.

She shouldn’t be disappointed. He has only looked at her like that once. And from what she has been told, that also happened at her sister’s prompting.

But whatever his expression, and whatever her sister intends… he praised her just now. In front of her siblings. Including Gamora. And she has it in her memory banks, for those times when she might doubt it truly happened, and can play it back at will.

“But as for you, little one, what you did was foolish,” he says, turning to Gamora. “As you said, you acted rashly.”

“I did. I was irritated, and I acted without thinking.”

“And relied on someone else to save you. Which is fine if they are there. But if not…” He trails off. Nebula’s lip curls in a twisted smile. _You cannot even say it, can you? What might have happened if no one had been there to save your favorite._

“That’s why I told you.” Gamora bites her lip. Nebula winces. Gamora did that as a child, but doesn’t any more. For her to do it now means fear. Or shame.

But she goes on. “Nebula shouldn’t be punished for this. Not when I’m the one who erred. It isn’t fair.”

Nebula blinks. _Did Gamora just--?_

“And that’s the most important thing. Isn’t that what you teach us? That above all else, we must be fair?”

“It is.” Father nods, his face grave. “And you are right. Meet me in the punishment cells tomorrow evening an hour after your meal.”

Gamora lowers her head in acknowledgment.

_Imbecile! I was attempting to help you avoid that! That benefits neither of us!_

“Nebula,” Father says. She looks up automatically, steeling herself against a thrill of fear.

“You acted courageously, as your siblings say. And you achieved much. You protected your sister. And salvaged a mission that might have come to nothing otherwise.”

“Yes, Father,” Nebula breathes, somehow afraid to say it louder, as though exulting too much will shatter the moment.

But you still took a risk that you could have avoided. And you still need a new arm.”

“Father—!“ That’s Gamora. Again.

_You got what you wanted, and it’s apparently an evening in the punishment cells. Now. Shut. Up._

“The Maw and I will spend the night refining an improved design. We will build and install it tomorrow morning.”

Nebula nods, the gesture automatic. Gamora makes a dismayed noise. Ebony Maw shifts his gaze to glare at Nebula, as though this sudden influx of work is her fault alone. But he nods as well, and unlike their idiot sister, he knows better than to speak.

“And stop dampening the sensory input,” Father says. “Pain is a consequence of the choice you made, daughter. Do not run from it.”

Nebula mutters a curse. _I turned it down. Not off. I would never turn it off! And how can you tell, anyway?_ She nods and obeys, gritting her teeth against the flare of agony.

Father nods to Cull, who steps forward, curls his hand into a fist, and punches Nebula’s arm as lightly as he can. Pain flares through Nebula’s sensor net and she snarls a wounded beast’s challenge, shifting into a fighting stance without knowing that she’s doing it.

Cull raises his arm in a defensive guard. “Yeah... she turned that back on.”

Corvus whistles. Proxima mutters something too quiet to hear, but Nebula is sure she hears an oath in it. She frowns. As if her siblings have not seen her punished before! _Compared to everything else, this is a reprieve. Mind your own business, lest I test the strength of my new fist upon your faces._

“Father.”

_Gamora. Shut up._

“Little one. That is final.”

“This wasn’t a sparring match. Nebula is injured. She must prepare for surgery. She needs rest.”

“Then let her get what rest she might this evening, in spite of the pain and not without it.”

“That is cruel. Even for you.”

Father’s demeanor changes. He slumps in his throne and pinches the bridge of his nose. He frowns again, but now he looks more weary than stern. “Little one. The universe is far more cruel than I could ever hope to be.”

Gamora meets his gaze. “We know this.”

“Then you know I must prepare you. You and your sister and all of your siblings alike. If I do not, it will break you.”

His lips twist as though he too is in pain, and when he speaks his voice is soft. “And if that happens, the fault will be mine, not yours. For failing to make you ready for what it will do.”

Nebula shakes her head. _Sister. Stop. I cannot bear it._ “I understand, Father.”

“Thank you, daughter. Go to the medbay with your brother and rest, as you can. We will work as quickly as we can to have your new limb ready.”

“Nebula,” whispers Gamora. Too loudly.

She looks at Thanos again. His expression hasn’t changed.

 _Failure is a grave sin,_ she remembers him saying. _But only because of its price._

Nebula looks over at Ebony Maw. He inclines his head and turns to leave. She fixes her gaze on his black robes.

“I understand,” she says again, and follows him out.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gamora is not at all pleased that Nebula’s lying around the medical bay waiting for enhancement with her pain sensors on full blast. 
> 
> So what does one do when one’s sister is being singled out?
> 
> Annoy her into feeling better, of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Ilya_Boltagon for beta, and for hinting the ending needed some cleaning up tonally. 😁

Gamora stalks through the halls of the base, careful to keep her steps silent. She learned the skill years ago, when she was still small, and it’s second nature to her now.

In fact, it’s a little too easy. She scowls. She should probably not make things harder for herself, but she’s already bored. And Father never forbade anyone from visiting the medbay. So even if she does get caught, it won’t matter.

It might earn her a few taunts from Big and Reptilian, and Chipped Horns might call her soft, but she knows how to shut both of them up anyway. And the smart ones are busy or wouldn’t bother to mock her without them. She pulls a small fruit from the folds of her tunic, grinning in triumph when that doesn’t make any noise either.

She tosses the fruit into the air with a little spinning twist, keeps walking, and catches it in her hand as it drops.

It’s risky—this is the first tharfruit of the season, or whatever passes for one in Father’s greenhouse, and she knows from experience that if she drops it it’ll become one pulpy bruise. But every game Father ever taught her has some danger in it, and if this one didn’t she’d stay bored.

She finds Nebula lying in a cot in Bay Six. The lights are dim but not off, which means she’s still awake. Isn’t even trying to sleep.  _Damn fool._

“Hey! Nebula!”

Her sister’s bald head turns. There’s a gleam of metal and a flare of light from her synthetic eye. “Oh. It’s you. I might have guessed.”

Gamora tosses the fruit into the air. “I brought you something.”

“Idiot. Begone. I was attempting to rest.”

“And not doing a very good job of it. Let me in.”

She hears a huff from Nebula, but the air in front of Nebula’s cot shimmers with light, the force field around the bay dissipating. Nebula sits up, giving Gamora just barely enough room to fit at the foot of her bed.

Gamora sits, grumbling and pushing against Nebula’s feet to make it clear she noticed. She holds out the fruit. “Here. Eat.”

“You should not have brought that here.”

Gamora rolls her eyes. “Did it already.”

“I am being punished. If Father knew you were going to come here, he never would have—“

“He gave it to me. Which means it’s mine. Which means I can do what I want with it. And you’re getting a mod, and that’s punishment enough. Knowing you, you’ll sulk for a week. And then who’s gonna have to put up with you?"

Nebula laughs. Her eyes go wide. “Someday, sister, you are going to bend the wrong rule.”

“When I do, have fun.” Gamora frowns and tosses the fruit at Nebula’s head. Nebula reaches out to catch it in her good hand, so quickly she must have been acting on instinct. Gamora smirks. _Gotcha._

Nebula looks down at the fruit in her hand. She shakes her head, obviously intending to be dramatic. But then she lowers her head and takes a bite.

She sighs and relaxes, obviously savoring the taste. Gamora snickers. As far as she’s concerned, tharfruit are too sweet.

Nebula looks at her. It’s probably meant to be a glare but she has thar juice running down her chin and can’t seem to resist licking her lips. “Are you pleased with yourself now?”

“For what?”

“All of this.”

“For coming to visit you? No, I don’t think so.” Gamora grins. “You’re a rude, ungrateful fool.”

This time Nebula does manage a glower. She shrugs her damaged shoulder, winces, and spreads her good arm wide, still holding the fruit tight in her palm. “No. All of this. Father praising me in front of everyone. He and the Maw spending the night to prepare the new modification. Next week’s sparring roster.”

“Nebula, I—“

“I know a reprieve when I see one, sister. But it happened because you intervened.” She takes another bite of the fruit. “And once again, I owe you.”

“Owe me? Nebula, if you think I did it just so you would—!” She stops. “Wait. You’re on the sparring roster?” Gamora’s expression darkens. If Thanos is wanting Nebula to spar right after a mod, there’s no way any of this is a reprieve.

“Of course I am.”

Then Father is blaming Nebula for all of this. _Still._ When Gamora told him herself that wasn’t fair. She scowls. _Damn it. I was only trying to remind him he should be fair even to her!_

Nebula meets her angry gaze. “You didn’t look at it, then.”

“No. Why would I look at it now?”

“Hotheaded idiot.” For the first time tonight, Nebula smiles. “Look.”

She turns to the nearest wall and blinks. When she opens her eyes again, her cybernetic eye projects the list on the bare wall.

“Wait,” Gamora says again, her eyes widening. “That’s… that’s me against Cull.”

“Yes.”

“Not against you.”

”Not against me.”

The only sound Gamora can make is a small, strangled laugh. If she cries out any louder, some childish part of her fears the words might rearrange themselves the next time she closes her eyes.

“I told you,” Nebula says.

“Then who’d he pair with you?” Gamora squints. “Proxima and Corvus? Both? So soon after a modification?”

Nebula licks thar juice off her chin and grins. “It’s just an installation. I am… not losing a healthy limb this time. The arm will be new, and my flesh is... relatively undamaged. My regenerative abilities should take care of any injury long before I fight them.”

“Nice.” Gamora’s lip twitches. “But that’s still two against one. If he’s trying to be fair—“

Nebula laughs and cuts off the projection. She turns back to Gamora and bares her teeth like she’s challenging an enemy. “As usual, you underestimate me, sister.”

“I just meant—“

“All I will have to do is split them up and ensure they stay that way.”

“Right.” Gamora smiles in spite of herself. She’s beaten them hundreds of times, and Nebula’s watched her do it. “And then get in close enough they can’t reach you with those…” She mimics holding a staff in both hands.

“Precisely.”

Gamora's grin widens. A sudden urge overtakes her to reach out and touch Nebula’s uninjured shoulder, like Father touches her head when she’s afraid. Or when he feels especially proud of her. But she isn’t sure her sister would welcome that now, so she settles for giving Nebula the little smile Father does when he’s feeling fond of Gamora’s siblings.

Nebula holds up the half-eaten core of tharfruit like she’s making Cull’s hand sign for yes.

Gamora lets out a low whistle. “Then Father did listen.”

“To you.”

There’s an edge in her sister’s voice. Gamora takes another deep breath and decides against pressing the point.

“What exactly did you say to him?” Nebula asks.

“You were there. You heard it.”

“Not today. Before today. A month ago, I think.”

“I didn’t—I don’t—wait. Yes I did.” Gamora squints. “How the hell do you know about that?”

“He told me.”

“What?”

“He told me.” Her mouth hardens into a stern line and she lowers her voice. “‘Gamora said I should speak with you.’”

Gamora rolls her eyes. “He didn’t!” She lets out a little laugh of disbelief and puts her head in her hands. Of all the things for him to say! To Nebula, of all people. “I just said that you were sulking. And that I was annoyed.”

“Sulking. Is that what you call it? Sulking.”

“Nebula, I—“

Nebula dumps the core of tharfruit into a wastebasket by the bed and licks thar juice off her fingers so slowly she must want to make Gamora wait.

When Gamora's so tired of watching it she wants to break Nebula's good wrist, Nebula says, “No matter. It worked.”

Gamora makes a tight-lipped little smile. “It did.”

“Then go back to bed, fool. You’ve done enough for one day.”

Gamora stands up and holds up her hands in surrender. “Okay. Okay.” She backs out of the medical bay, and the force field shimmers closed behind her. She shakes her head and spares one last look for Nebula, who might even be smiling.

Gamora’s lip twitches. She holds up her hand in a little half-wave. It’s too much, and she lowers her hand right away. But Nebula’s still looking at her, and her eyes are bright.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nebula has her sparring match. With siblings that aren't Gamora. Which means she'd better not mess this one up...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Ilya_Boltagon for beta. And for being nice to me about my fight scenes. :-)

The sparring room feels almost welcoming. The light is a cold blue-white, as always, the walls dark and the angles of the room harsh. It usually makes Nebula feel exposed, at least when her siblings are gathered around to watch, as they are today, rather than in the ring with her.

In the ring with them, she is confident. In the ring, she can face them all. In the ring, she can lay two or three of them low before Gamora finally catches up with her. But if they’re not all fighting, that is different. Because she is going to lose, and do it in front of them, and there are no bruises or gashes or breaks to divide their attention. If they are watching, then she is laid bare, a tangle of metal and flesh.

Laid bare before them… and before Thanos.

Nebula drops to her knees in obeisance before her father and splays out her arms in front of her, the glare of the lights above hot against her back.

But this is a reprieve, as she told her sister. A reward for her quick thinking. No… for her bravery, as even Father himself confessed. And Nebula intends not to squander it. She looks up at him and, at his nod, lets her batons flare with energy.

Bowing before her father means she cannot see Proxima and Corvus, but she knows where they are, making their own displays from the far corners of the arena. She hears their weapons clang against the ground and turns to look out over the room, her body tensed for the command to begin.

It’s to her advantage that the room isn’t empty, as it sometimes is. Scattered throughout are obstacles: jagged hills built of rock and metal, upon which or behind which one can hide.

Or gain the high ground, if they can hold it.

That isn’t all. Boulders hover in the far corner, held aloft by antigravity that mimics her eldest sibling’s levitation powers. The ground near the artificial outcroppings is jagged with gravel, and just off the center of the ring lies a pool of something dark and thick enough to slow or blind.

She focuses on it with her artificial eye and is just about to magnify it when she hears her father call out.

_“ <Begin.>”_

Instinct tells her to find cover immediately. She wills herself to ignore it and dashes forward. It’s a fool’s move, but she does it for a reason. Proxima is the more impulsive opponent, and if Nebula can draw her out, that offers valuable information.

That, and finding Corvus will prove harder. His specialty is stealth, and the worst thing for Nebula would be for him to sneak up on her when she is engaging her other foe. But he is fond of Proxima. Perhaps too much. And if he sees Nebula engage her fiercely enough he may reveal himself.

If her trick is believable to opponents who have known her all her life.

She hears a cry of challenge and rushes to meet it, giving her neural computers the task of mapping her surroundings. She’ll need to stay close to cover in case the ploy works too well. But the next sound she hears is not another battle cry. It’s the whistle of a weapon hurled through the air, force lending it speed.

_Well then. That is an answer. But surely you realize that would never hit me._

She falls to the ground less gracefully than she’d hoped to so early in the fight. But even with its power dampened for a friendly fight, that spear is a powerful weapon, and Nebula has no desire to test her body’s regeneration against it so soon after her repairs.

It whistles through the air above her and lands on the floor of the arena just past where she lies. She stays down, knowing what will come next. The weapon rises into the air, speeding back to the hand that threw it. Nebula smirks, plotting its trajectory. That must mean that Proxima is somewhere over—

A black shadow and a flash of gold, and all she can do is roll to one side to avoid the bright metal plunging down toward her vitals. The point of the blade glances off her new arm, and sparks flare from the point of impact.

_Then I’m not the only one attempting to be clever. You didn’t intend to hit me at all with that throw, did you, sibling?_

Even that little bit of contact with the point of Corvus’s weapon is painful. It fades quickly, thanks to the upgraded arm, but if that had been her flesh… Nebula grits her teeth and collects herself, sweeping out with her legs.

The shadow hits the ground near her with a low, echoing grunt, and Nebula’s grimace becomes a smirk of satisfaction. Better if she’d had the chance to shock him too.

But she’ll get to that later.

She leaps to her feet with unnatural speed. Under any other circumstance she’d curse the feeling. Even though she’s been modified for almost as many years as she’s spent unaltered, it still feels strange. Wrong, despite that she’s no longer sure she remembers what right feels like.

But here, as on the battlefield, it’s too useful to disquiet her for long. She dashes for one of the hills, just past the lake, in hopes of buying a few moments to collect herself. If she’d just managed to shock Corvus with her batons, even powered down for sparring…

_Do not think of that. To dwell on failure is to court it._

Crouching behind a mound of scrap, she calls up the memory of Proxima’s throw and calculates its trajectory. The data clouds her vision and she strains to listen, too, just in case Corvus is closer than she thinks he is.

Hearing nothing, she sprints toward the place Proxima must have thrown from. Near the boulders. Which means she has the high ground and a pole arm. Nebula snarls in frustration and sends more electricity surging through her batons.

She slinks around the base of the lowest boulders, natural and mechanical senses alike alert for any movement. Her heat seeking sensors find it first, on the highest boulder, the energy crackling over the tip of her spear a bright nova in Nebula’s altered vision.

Easier to find than Corvus. But more of a problem, watching and waiting.

She tilts her head and calls out. “Come down, elder sibling! Come down! This is a fight, not a chance for you to lie in wait like some lazy beast. Come down and face me. Or are you afraid I will defeat you, as I have before?”

The ploy is crude, perhaps, but it works. Well enough, at least, that her sibling roars, leaps down to the boulder just above her, and whirls her spear in challenge. Nebula ducks to avoid it, crossing her batons over her head to block the strike. Proxima yelps at the shock of energy. When she recovers, she says, “You’re full of insults, little sister! But what makes you think you can reach me with those little toys you have?”

 _Nothing. But I can reach you with these._ She springs forward, relying on her altered leg to lend her momentum and trying to keep out of range.

Proxima aims for her anyway. Heat glares off the metal of her shoulder. She grunts and holds out her forearm to block the blow. The spear crackles with greedy energy, but the point swings no closer. She grins, bares her teeth, and pushes back with a strength she didn’t know she had.

Proxima presses forward, but it’s of little use against this new abomination that her father and her sibling have devised. Nebula snarls in triumph, half heartfelt and half to sound like she’s impressed. Proxima tries to pull away but stumbles. Nebula snarls and seizes her chance. She ducks down to strike out at her unprotected side, driving the tip of her baton into her belly.

Jolted by the shock. Proxima’s body goes rigid. Nebula drops her baton to test the strength of her new-formed fist instead. The blow sends Proxima sprawling, and she puts out her hands to better break her fall. The spear tumbles from her grip and lands near Nebula’s leg.

Which isn’t the boon it might seem to be. Proxima’s brows knit and she stretches out her arm to call her weapon back.

Nebula looks up briefly, scanning the area for any sign of her black-clad sibling. She finds none. Which means must press what advantage she has. She steps forward with her altered leg, pressing down on Proxima’s wrist. Proxima grimaces in pain and the spear twitches on the ground and falls still.

_This is taking too long. I am a target._

Nebula lifts her other leg, letting her foot hover just over Proxima’s neck. She must finish this, and if she can pretend she’s forgotten about Corvus, at least it may buy her some small advantage. “Do you yield?” she snarls.

Proxima stares back at her, red eyes bright with rage. But the words that come from her are _“ <I yield.>”_

_That was fast._

_Because he is right behind me._

Nebula whirls around, her flesh hand clutching a baton, her augmented one curled tight into a fist. But Corvus isn’t going to fall for what felled Proxima. She pushes back at him for only a moment before her twists away, striking out with his staff so she must leap out of the way in her turn.

She lands too close to the boulder’s edge for her liking. She whirls around and leaps down to the next one. Her sibling is agile too, but most of his skills are devoted to stealth, so it seems here also her augmentations offer an advantage.

 _One defeated. One remaining._ She curls her lip. Could she best them—both of them—without the modifications? She would like to say she could. That it was only Gamora and their ceaseless rounds of sparring that brought her to this. And perhaps it was true in the beginning, when they were all younger children, and none of them had mastered the skills they would later learn. But was it still true now?

 _Do not think of it now._ She wills herself to focus. Corvus has disappeared again for the moment, which gives her time to plan her next move, if she can remain prepared for surprises. That is what he will do again if he can. Appear from nowhere, when she is not prepared. And has only one baton, since she left the other on one of the boulders…

Very well. If Father wishes to see what his new design can do, so be it.

She picks her way through the debris, dashing from hiding place to hiding place. It won’t bewilder her sibling for long, but it will give her a chance to get closer to the pool. She does not know what foul soup makes it up, but Corvus relies on speed and silence. Whatever that is won’t kill him, but it will make it harder for him to—

Appear out of nowhere. She whirls around at a slight noise, baton and fist alike at the ready. Nothing comes. A slip of shadow passes by, and she turns her mind’s computer to calculating its position even as she races to a lump of scrap just beside the pool.

A sound at her back startles her. She turns, her back to the pool, and holds up her enhanced arm to block just as he strikes out at her. She backs away, watching for an opening to lunge in and close the gap between them, but every time she twitches, he sees it and reacts.

She cannot let him use her own plan against her. Everything rides on this. On whether she can win. Father spoke to her before, weeks ago. He almost seemed… inclined to forgive her failure. And now he owes her for saving Gamora also. But with this match the debt is paid. If she does not make the most of this, things go back to how they were before. She knows it and Gamora must too. She looks up, trying to see her sister where she sits outside the ring, to let the sight remind her of what she must do—

She catches sight of the flash of black too late, in the corner of her unaltered eye. By the time she thinks to calculate how far she is from the edge of the pool, the staff of the glaive hits her ankle and she falls into the mire.

The smell is foul, but most of all it stings, thick slime coating her eyes and burning. It slides into the seams of her cybernetics and that burns too. It’s no worse than any other pain she’s felt, but she can’t see and the thick stuff slows her movement. And her sibling still stands, above her, his movement unhindered.

_I will fail._

She had not expected the thought to come. Not here, not now. Not against someone who isn’t her young sister. But it comes anyway, and it chokes her, just like the mud that threatens to fill her mouth if she’s foolish enough to scream. The thought comes, chilling and paralyzing, and she feels her grip ease on her baton. Why had she ever thought…

 _That I could defeat someone I have vanquished before._ Her cybernetic eye sears away the muck around it, and all she can see before it focuses is light and color, but that’s enough to see the swing of a weapon and roll, however heavily, aside.

Her baton is covered in muck, and she can see electricity trying to crackle feebly over it. Sparring match or no, she turns the power up in hopes to burn whatever that is off it and reaches out with her new arm. She grabs for an ankle, glad to be battling one of her slighter siblings, and squeezes her fist around it.

He growls in pain, a low echo, and drops.

Which was all she required. She lets go, offering a silent apology for anything she might have broken, and gets to her feet, holding the baton out defensively in front of her. He grunts and tries to rise, but only his uninjured leg will obey him fully, and he blinks, his eyes stinging as hers had been. He swings at her, but his aim is wide—likely a blind strike at where she had been moments ago.

The pool is viscous and sticky but her legs are modified and uninjured, and she closes the distance between them far more easily than he could have. He swings again, his aim improved. But it is as she said to Gamora before. His weapon is long, and she’s too close to reach. She twists her hip and drives her fist into his stomach.

He doubles over, winded, and she backs up just far enough to replace her fist with the baton in her other hand. _“ <Yield.>”_

He snarls. She tilts her head at his stubbornness and shocks him. His body seizes up, as Proxima’s did, and falls into the pool where Nebula had landed moments later. She steps aside as quickly as she can, weighed down by the muck.

Corvus’s inert form rises out of the muck, lifted by Ebony Maw’s telekinesis. She sees him dash toward them, Proxima just behind him, as he lowers Corvus down outside the pool with slow care.

She waits just long enough to see him give the signal that her opponent is not seriously harmed. Seeing it, she nods and turns back to Father and Gamora and kneels down, her posture formal but her head held high in victory.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corvus reminisces. Mostly about Proxima.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Headcanons, headcanons everywhere. This particular sad backstory comes purely from my own head given 1) his canonical closeness with Proxima and 2) his canonical biological relationship to someone who does not remotely resemble him. Marvel why.
> 
> 1a. Therefore, if there's something canonical that looks nothing like this, oh well.
> 
> 1b. Yes, there will be more, both about Mysterious Failed Murder Girl and about Cull and Proxima.
> 
> 2\. Thanks as always to Ilya_Boltagon for beta.

Corvus Glaive looks down at his belly. It rarely goes uncovered, but he’s in his quarters now. And his siblings know better than to make something of his appearance. No one else will see him. Not if he doesn’t want to be seen.

If they did, he’d just kill them. Or maim them, at least. He doesn’t like to waste lives. Not even Chitauri lives. But they’re a hive mind, and he’d rather not have half of Father’s army notice him. So whatever he did would have to be enough to discourage a species prone to spreading gossip.

He shakes his head. He has more important things to think about than whether other beings find scholar-caste ugly. He sighs and looks down at his exposed skin.

A waxy grey burn cuts across his belly. He draws an ointment from his belt and squeezes a quantity of it onto his fingers, then brings them to the wound.

He hisses at his own touch, but immediately quiets. It’s only pain, and he has long known how to endure that. He has no reason to be noisy about it, like a child that Father has only just brought back with him.

Besides, now that the Maw has confirmed he has no hidden injuries, he knows Proxima was injured worse. He growls at the thought.

He doesn’t begrudge Nebula her victory. His sibling has endured much. Enough that he has tried, at times, to offer her comfort. When he is sure that too will go unnoticed, and not show a lack of respect.

That he cannot do. He owes much to his lord. That vow of service is the reason he’s alive today. And the reason his brother by blood was permitted to stay with him. Without that, Cull would be back on their home planet, mourning and alone.

And above and beyond all that, Lord Thanos accepted both Cull and Corvus as his sons. His children. Not his vassals.

That debt, neither Corvus nor his blood-brother can ever repay.

And Proxima’s ready concession was a strategic move anyway. Surely Nebula didn’t have to break her wrist! Repairing small breaks like that takes time and care. And while his eldest sibling is skilled and precise, Corvus knows from experience that easing pain is not his first priority.

He closes his eyes and lets out a sigh, remembering. He’d been unconscious when the Maw repaired his body. And that was long enough ago now that the pain has faded, a shadow that lurks in the corners of his memory. But however long ago that was, the memory lingers still.

How many of his bones had he broken that day? He doesn’t know. He remembers only crushing weight on his chest and legs. That he’d tried to extricate himself but couldn’t. That since he was still breathing, he’d stopped wasting his energy and settled down to watch the world burn.

He lays the tube of ointment down and lifts his hand to his head. It doesn’t ward off the memories, but his fingers pressed against his temples remind him he is here, not there. On his lord father’s flagship, his wounds repaired, all but the blister Nebula’s shock sticks left on him earlier today. And the sting in that wound tells him that it will heal.

Not that she will see it. Even if most beings didn’t think him ugly, his body bears more scars than most members of his caste would. On his home world, it’s the Warbodied like Cull who have the scars. Not the scholars like him.

Thanos upended that, of course. He expected everyone who served him to know how to fight. Or to learn how, whatever their age or shape or size.

Corvus smiles. It’s not the life he planned for. He’d always expected to stay behind the front lines, giving his brother advice or orders rather than fighting alongside him. But now he is a warrior in his own right. Now his enemies fear him, not just his brother. Now his brother is the fist of the Great One, as is proper… but those who manage to evade its strike don’t see his shadow coming.

There is more than one kind of warrior, Corvus has learned. His own people could never have taught him that. They were too busy shaming people like his birth parents for even getting married in the first place. _A scholar and a Warbodied mating? No wonder their sons look so different!_

He scoffs, the low growl of scorn echoing through the silent room. Not only is he a fighter now but so are his other siblings, of all different races from worlds throughout the universe. His people are fools, too wedded to their ways to see that any being can be trained, and that force is not the only thing that makes someone deadly.

And he learned it well enough to teach it in his turn. He smiles, thinking of Proxima’s painted face. Of the dark smear of blue that covers her forehead and extends under her eyes, all of it a testament to learning and skill. She’d earned it. Corvus had made sure of that.

He’d feared at first that Father would disapprove. Would want his new child to learn from him alone, as Corvus and his brothers had. He’d tried to keep what he was doing hidden, as shamed as he felt keeping secrets from Father. But the girl—nameless then, still striving to earn Father’s favor and a new name along with it—had revealed it herself one day.

Corvus himself hadn’t seen what happened. But from what Father told him later, that was by design. She’d hidden it even from him.

He sighs. If she had to do such a thing… he would, at least, have liked to see it.

Proxima is bold. Like his youngest sibling is. But Gamora has always been that way. Brave to the point of recklessness from the very beginning. If Thanos hadn’t favored her, she would have suffered for it.

Proxima was always angry. But her confidence? That, she’d learned.

Some of it from Corvus.

His smile deepens. Father himself had told him the story. Proxima had waited until their lesson for the day was done and Corvus and his brothers left the practice room. She’d approached Lord Thanos, knelt, and waited for him to acknowledge her. When he did, she’d asked him to attack again. He’d told her to practice with her brothers. Even taking care not to intend harm, he was far bigger and stronger than any of the children would ever be.

The girl had insisted. Corvus shakes his head, remembering Father telling him about it.

When he did, she’d blocked his blow as best a small child could—and managed to sneak in a counterattack after.

Corvus had worried. He hadn’t asked permission to aid the girl, and Father might think she had an unfair advantage. His stomach turns, remembering. Maybe it was, at that. Maybe he really had been unfair. But he couldn’t leave the new girl to her own devices. Not after what had happened to the girl before her…

He shudders. _That child made her own choices. The fault wasn’t ours._

_The fault wasn’t mine._

_Think of the woman who succeeded, not the little girl who failed._

“Proxima Midnight,” he says into the silence. He stretches a little and the burn stings and that feels… right, somehow. They’d lost to Nebula today, but when they won, they did it the same way. Through fearlessness and endurance. Won their names and their ranks and their right to call themselves the Great Titan’s son and daughter.

And their lord father had laughed recounting the story to him. Which meant no harm was done.

Thanos had said he’d asked if she’d figured the move out herself. She’d shaken her head and said, “Corvus showed me.”

He smiles into the darkness. Presses his fingertips to the burn, just to feel something. Proxima does that sometimes. Touches her wounds for the feeling. She shouldn’t, and he shouldn’t either, but it reminds him of her and of those old days, sharp and bright.

Fear had curled his stomach then. Fear and excitement. Father did not laugh like that, not when he was displeased. But Corvus had found it difficult, all the same, to bow his head and confess.

“You seem to have a skill for it,” Thanos had said. And since then he had helped to teach the others. And to train the Chitauri. Perhaps that was why he grieved them, after battles where many of them died.

But Proxima remains his first and his favorite. It's... not proper. Not entirely. But no Chitauri woman could ever call herself one of Thanos's elite, so it's forgivable. And Proxima has never broken, not like Corvus himself did that day when Lord Thanos found him. It had taken the strength of the Titan himself to lift the rubble that had pinned him in place.

He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. The ghost of an old ache rises from somewhere deep in his body, and he almost feels the crush of weight on his chest.

He sighs into the darkness and lets the memory overtake him.


End file.
